We have started regular monthly awareness meetings for teenage girls from local villages. The program consists of games and activies, interspersed with awareness talks on relevant issues, such as hygiene, nutrition, (in India, anemia is the 2nd most common cause of maternal deaths accounting for 19% of total maternal deaths,*) female infanticide, education, aids awareness etc. These meetings have been very well attended with between 60-100 girls regularly participating. They are starting to open up also about the problems they see in their villages, even citing prostitution as a problem, along with high dowries, lack of respect for women etc.
For Pongal (the Harvest festival of South India, which is a big celebration,) the girls also enjoyed dance competitions and displayed a lot of talent. We hope you enjoy the photos below of our meetings. *'Nutritional Status of Rural Pregnant Women' by
L.H. Madhavi, H.K.G. Singh,Department of Community Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Khaja Banda Nawaz Institute of Medical Science,Gulbarga-585105 (Karnataka) Click on an image to see a larger version.
Give A Chrismas Gift to a Needy Person.
Here are some gift ideas:
1. Father Tony has identified 16 exceptionally poor elderly people in the villages where we are working. He would like to gift the women (13) with a sari, which we can get for Rs.150 per sari, (about £3.00) and the men with a lungi, costing about Rs.125 per piece. Also, we can get them some warm bed covers for the cooler winter evenings for Rs.100 per cover ($2.00.)
2. Educational Items for Little Darlings, Creches or future school: We have a list of suggestions here along with Indian internet stores where these items can be purchased.
We've been blessed with some wonderful volunteers from Australia recently. Many thanks to Judith, Shioban, Kim and Leanne, for your wonderful help and love for the babies and children.
Elder's Day provided an opportunity to have a grand celebration--not only for the elderly residents, but also to inaugurate the new quarters for the sick elderly, and to celebrate the birthdays of Danny (turning 4) and Darshana (turning 3.) We hope you enjoy these video clips and photos of the happy celebration.
Dany and Darshana perform for the elderly:
The Little Darlings performance:
Suleka and Rani sing 'Happy Birthday' to Dany and Darshana
The carers of the babies and 'Lil Darlings' do a cultural performance for the elderly.
The elderly also gave a performance, and then were handed little gifts.
New child's size "Indian" toilet and new shower area. We have also put in a Western-style toilet for the physically challenged children who cannot use the Indian style one.
Here you see the village children at a creche going to the front yard for their bathroom time, as there are no toilets. Read how you can sponsor toilets here.
Thank you to Susee Group, Madurai for donating these supplies for a creche. We have been able to start working in one more creche, in Edyapatti, thanks to these supplies.
BEFORE: The creche only had the following items for 30 children before.
AFTER: Some of the lovely educational items donated by Susee.
With the start of the new school year here, we decided to start working right away in two villages creches. We still don't have all the needed sponsorship for renovations and educational items, but we decided to start with what we have, since the creche had no educational items or teaching at all. Here are a few photos of the children enjoying some action rhymes, construction blocks and colouring!
We received this lovely box of Clipo for the Little Darlings from an internet store. The name of the sender was not provided, but we send many thanks to our anonymous donor. The children will love this toy.
SHE staff took the students who faithfully attended the summer English classes on a fun excursion to Vagai Dam. As you can see, they all enjoyed themselves.
Summer school holidays take place in May in India. So SHE staff organised some English language classes for the tuition students. Emphasis was placed on learning through games and fun activities--after all, the children were taking their holiday time to attend these classes. The attendees all made lots of progress in their English-speaking skills.
