Summer Camp for Village Children

The children from our evening study centres are presently enjoying a summer camp at the SHE centre, as it is now summer school holidays. We are placing emphasis on helping their English skills, but making sure they have fun also.

Assistance for Another Anganwadi

We were able to provide assistance to another anganwadi this week, and arrange for a volunteer to assist there one or twice a week. Everyone was very grateful for the educational supplies we provided. Twin boys at this anganwadi are very underweight and not thriving as they should, so we have arranged for their very poor family to receive milk each for the boys.

Meena Stories

Our Tamil translations of the Meena Stories are proving to be a valuable tool for our ongoing awareness programs.

More Parents' Meetings

We are continuing meetings with parents of the students from our study-centres in different villages. The response has been very positive.

Mats for Anganwadi Children

We distributed these mats to the anganwadi that we assist. Now the children don't have to take their nap on the bare floor.

Support for Village Nursery Schools

RPI is providing assistance to local  village nursery schools, donating educational supplies, and sending in volunteers once or twice a week to work with the children, ensure proper usage of supplies, and to train the regular staff.

Parents' Meetings

This month, we are holding meetings with the parents of students attending the evening study centres. The  meetings cover the same awareness points that were shared with their children--this month on health and hygiene and hand washing, and encourage the parents to help and support their children, both in their studies and hygiene. 

Dictionaries for the Evening Study Centres

At our last teacher's meeting, the tuition teachers requested English/Tamil dictionaries, which we purchased for them this month.

New Evening Study Group in a Very Poor Village

This week we opened another evening study group to assist desperately poor, marginalised children continue with their schooling and obtain better grades.  We were also able to distribute some of the items donated by Lincpen to these children.

We now have seven tuition centres, assisting about 350 students. We have been getting very positive feedback from both their teachers and parents, and their exam marks are improving as a result of having homework assistance. 

More Awareness Programs

We have been continuing our awareness programs in different villages. Colourful charts and stories teach the children the importance of hygiene and hand-washing.

Awareness Programs for Older Children in the Villages

We have started awareness programs in the villages where we have tuition centres. The first topics we covered are health and hygiene, and importance of education. For these meetings we have undertaken to translate into Tamil the Meena comic books produced by UNICEF. Meena is a fictional character who educates the children of South Asia on issues of gender, health, and social inequality through her stories in comic books.

Teach a girl, enrich the world--A Talk by the Prime-Minister of Norway

By Erna Solberg and Hannah Godefa, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Erna Solberg is prime minister of Norway and co-chair of the U.N. Secretary General’s Millennium Development Goals Advocates. Hannah Godefa is UNICEF National Ambassador for Ethiopia. The views expressed are their own. This is the latest in a series of articles ahead of a special GPS show from Davos this Sunday.

As the humanitarian crises in South Sudan and Syria and Central African Republic continue to unfold, girls are once again caught in the cross-fire. Murdered by soldiers, killed or sexually assaulted as they flee, their lives are being ravaged by wars they did not start. Once again, they are the victims of somebody else’s dispute, subjected to sexual violence by those hoping to achieve their military and political goals.

How much more are we willing to stand?

Currently 28.5 million children in conflict-affected countries are out of school, more than half of them are girls. It is not just their security, but their education and hope for a better life that are being ruined.

But these girls don’t need to be faceless, voiceless statistics. They can be victors, like Malala, who captivated us when she bravely stood up for her right to education, changing the way we think about young girls and their rights.

The key is investing in girls’ potential, something that can be a win-win for everyone – enabling female participation in local economies can accelerate the fight against poverty, inequity and gender disparity. When you educate a girl, you educate a nation.
This is one of the key messages we, the prime minister of Norway and a 16-year-old UNICEF National Ambassador for Ethiopia, will deliver this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos as we encourage those gathered to “reshape the world” by putting young girls first. We will raise our voices to galvanize the crucial support needed to change attitudes and transform the lives of the countless Malalas, standing together to ensure that these girls are neither invisible nor forgotten.

We are two very different women from different generations, cultures and countries, but like millions of other women and men out there, we agree on this: invest in girls. The question is, is anyone really listening to such calls? After all, we’ve been talking about giving girls equal access to education, employment and healthcare for the past three decades. Will the international community – government, business and the general public – finally take much needed action?

Educated girls and women have smaller families and healthier children, are less likely to die in childbirth, are more likely to see their children survive past the age of 5, are more likely to send their children to school, and are better able to protect themselves and their children from malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, trafficking, and sexual exploitation. Education empowers women, multiplying their economic choices and contributions, and increasing their political voice and influence across the board.

The numbers don’t lie. For every year a girl stays in school and learns, her future earnings increase hugely. An extra year of primary school education, for example, boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent. A one percentage point increase in female secondary education raises the average level of GDP by 0.3 percentage points. Does anyone need more convincing?
In today’s hyper-networked world, we are witnessing unprecedented shifts in traditional power dynamics, and we will all end up impoverished if we remain complicit to girls being denied their right to a better future. Denying girls their rights – whether it be for social, cultural, or economic reasons – means that half the world’s population is prevented from fully contributing to its own economic growth and well-being and to that of local communities.

The voices calling for action are not just ours, but have been heard echoing around the world in the United Nations’ MY World survey on people’s development priorities, as well as in the action agenda laid out in the Girl Declaration. When girls and women across the developing world have been asked what they want for their future, the resounding answer is: education, jobs, healthcare and security.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have been critical in galvanizing progress around gender equality and women’s empowerment, but we must build on this success. The clock is ticking: with close to 700 days to go until the MDGs deadline, the targets we set ourselves won’t be reached unless greater investment in girls’ empowerment is made. Without this, girls will continue to drop out of school for lack of safe and supportive learning environments. Women will still marry young, and will still die in childbirth each day for want of simple medical interventions.

As the old adage goes, you can teach a man to fish to feed himself for a lifetime. But if you invest in a girl, she feeds herself, educates future children, lifts up her community and propels her nation forward – charting a path that offers dignity for all in the process.

Building Progress

The SHE Centre finally has a roof. Here you see the corridors and in the foreground, a large rain-water harvesting tank.

Pongal Sports Day for about 100 of our Tuition-Centre Students

Pongal is the harvest festival and is one of the most important festivals celebrated in Tamil Nadu. During the school holiday, we organised a sports day for all the attendees of our evening study centres, giving them the opportunity to participate in some wholesome activity, and sports, which is something they rarely if ever have opportunity to do. Lots of fun was had by all!

 ON YOUR MARKS......

GET SET....

GO!

Some Happy Winners

Merry Christmas