News of POOR, May 2009
Hi and a big Thank you to all those of you who have helped us to do something to make a difference! This year has seen a big expansion of our work and has otherwise been quite eventful in so many ways.
With warmest wishes to all
Changes
Sulekha Ghosh, our Treasurer and one of the founding members of POOR died at the end of March. We will all miss her and send our sincere condolences to her family. A replacement will be elected this month. We will also be shifting our office address, so keep an eye on our website for the latest.
Sales of Christmas Cards
Many, many thanks to Ellie, Zoe, Natasha, Ruth, Ulrike and Adriana who helped sell Christmas cards for POOR this year.
Child Sponsorship Programme
The
child sponsorship programme is doing well with over 60 sponsors supporting
the education of desperately poor children in the villages of India. We
have also expanded our sponsorship programme into Bangladesh where huge
sections of the population are living in dire poverty that is really heartbreaking
to see. Many children are suffering from chronic malnutrition with little
or no access to even the rudiments of an education. If you or anyone you
know would like to help one of them, please do get in touch. If you would
like to help, but can't afford to do it alone, ask your friend or friends
to do it together. Remember that even a little bit can make a huge difference
to a child in need.
Downloadable Gifts that Give Catalogue
The Gifts that Give Catalogue can now be downloaded from our website and printed out to show to friends and family. So if you would like to do something to make a difference, but don't have a lot of time to spare, please make a copy and show it to everyone you know. And of course, if you know anyone who has a birthday and already has everything they need, you may like to consider giving a poor child a gift in their name. Remember, these kids have nothing and even a blanket can save them from a lot of suffering.
Exciting News from Bangladesh
In coordination with local NGOs, POOR has started work in Bangladesh. In March we opened an orphanage in Ramshiila, a village in Borisal District in the south west where there are lots of canals, waterways and rivers for transportation.
The orphanage currently has 6 children and another 9 are waiting to come as soon as we can arrange sponsors for them. To open the orphanage we had to arrange more beds, put in 4 windows in our large tin hut where the children are currently accommodated, build a new bamboo kitchen and repair our second toilet and urinals. Now we are expanding the vegetable garden to help feed all the extra mouths. If you (or anyone you know) would like to help, please do get in touch.
Kindergartens for Bangladesh
In Bangladesh today there are no education programmes for village children under the age of 5, and, according to the national newspapers, 70% of all children are unable to read properly or do even simple multiplication by the age of 10. As a result many remain semi-literate and are unable to ever achieve their full potential. We decided to make a child friendly education system, starting with a kindergarten syllabus targeting 3 year old children and then to open as many schools as we can. We already have a whole team of people in the north of the country ready to help us to set up the programme and train the teachers. We plan to increase by one class every year and gradually create an effective kindergarten and primary education system. We are thinking of videoing some of the training classes to enable us to spread our programme more easily and effectively. If anyone who is interested in getting involved in this exciting and challenging project, please do contact us.
Other News
During this period we have helped Goddha School in India to complete its roof and so it can shift the existing small primary school into its own premises, arranged an electric connection for Bhadrak School and provided Bhalurghat School with new doors and windows.
Jaipur
Over the last year 10 volunteers have helped out at this project, and the children's education has improved tremendously from all the help they have received. Roshani again came second in her class and her teacher was amazed at her knowledge and understanding, after she was helped by our volunteers. So a very big "Thank You!" to all of you. Our children remember all of you with great love and affection.
On the structural side, the building has developed tremendously with your help. The flooring has been finished, doors and windows put in (even in the bathrooms where there used to be a cloth instead of a door!!!) and all the bathrooms have been made operational. Ruth even got her church involved, and they fundraised a whopping Rs. 215,000 to build a railing on the stairs and roof as well as waterproofing the roof. Pictures of the new railings and some of the children's artwork can be viewed on the church website. A heartfelt "Thank you" to all of you.
Uma Nivas
We have now installed the two handpumps, Linda Donan helped us fundraise, providing a water supply for the orphanage and Rarh Hostel. Before this, the students had to carry their daily drinking water from the girl's high school. Many, many thanks, Linda. You have no idea how much your handpumps are appreciated.
In January, as the Uma Nivas jeep had broken down beyond repair, the project bought a secondhand jeep, but they were cheated by the sales company and the jeep soon broke beyond repair too. So with over a hundred hungry mouths to feed, we urgently need help to fundraise a NEW one. No more secondhand jeeps for us!!! Can anyone help?
In February the new guesthouse for volunteers at the Uma Nivas High School was completed, and electricity and running water installed. So now our volunteers can live in comfort in their new guest house!!
In March, Pablo, our Spanish volunteer, bought the high school a refrigerator and a desktop PC. Four volunteers (Arnrid and Denise from the UK, Lara from Brazil and Pablo) collectively donated a new printer and scanner to go with it. So the girls were able to have two months of computer classes with Pablo before he left at the end of May. Many thanks to all of you, and especially to Pablo, for giving our girls such a wonderful opportunity.
Rarh Hostel: Funds have been raised by volunteers to complete a new kitchen and carry out repairs to the roof as well as build a small room on the roof to stop the rain entering the building in the rainy season.
Pablo introduced the high school girls to Dodgeball and they love it so much that it has now become their daily sporting obsession. Other recent sporting activities include a mountain climbing expedition to a nearby hill led by Didi Taparoti in April and a trip to the seaside at Digha organized by Pablo. For most of the 50 girls who went on the trip, it was their ever visit to the ocean, so they were completely ecstatic.
Many of them are very talented dancers and they performed dances and a drama in front of a huge audience at the DMS festival towards the end of the month.
Our agricultural volunteer, Margot, donated funds to carry rich topsoil from a dried up pond to the high school garden. This will greatly improve the fertility of the school's vegetable garden and the yield from the fruit trees. Thanks a lot, Margot!
On
May 9th Uma Nivas had a big party to celebrate Baba's birthday, and also
Pablo's! We hope you had a great day, Pablo!
The Uma Nivas Project has had eight volunteers so far this year, but only two of them have submitted their feedback. So, for those of you who haven't done it yet, please do send in your feedback.
Now we want to develop a medical programme to serve the local people and have already collected Rs. 36,000 towards the cost of a medical jeep which we urgently need in order to run medical camps in the remote tribal villages of the area.
Trivandrum
We have had four volunteers so far this year, but have had no feedback yet. Due to government regulations regarding tribal children, our former orphans, Nandini, Bina and Vinita had to be sent back to Mizoram. The project now has three new orphans living there. The two schools are running well and the children have been delighted with the efforts of our volunteers to teach them English.
Our Homeopathic Clinic 
Our homeopathic clinic in Nagpol village near Kolkata is now doing really well with around 60 patients every week. The clinic has been so popular that we have been asked to do one in another village too, but so far due to lack of funds, we have not been able to respond. We need around Rs. 1200 in support per month to be able to take up this new challenge. If anyone would like to help, please do get in touch.
Eye Camp
POOR organized an Eye Camp on the 12th April at Shikta village near Nagpol in partnership with the Hooghly Rotary Club. 135 patient had their eyes checked and 35 were operated for cataracts. Well done, team! That was a great service!
Special Event: Spiritual Trek to Ladakh
We invite the more adventurous among you to join us in August on a 10 day trek to Ladakh, one of the most beautiful places on earth. The trek will combine yoga and meditation with a challenging physical workout at high altitude.
Volunteers Feedback
From Denise Goodson:
I have had a wonderful experience. The project is so worth while. We were made so welcome by the girls and the Didis and teachers. Sunita cooked for us so well. Didi Vratiisha is lovely, as are all the Didis. I was treated to a ride on the back of Didi's scooter into the village to meet some of the families and the children. It was safe to go with her and it's lovely the way everyone respects her. It was fascinating to go into some of the houses to see how simply things are done and I found the cooking fascinating. One of the stories I read to them and left with them was the Gingerbread Man and so I will send a photo of me making gingerbread men.
They loved the soft toys that we took with us and we shall send some so that Class 4 can have one each. Didi said that was OK. We bought a printer and scanner, you probably know that, for them which we hope will prove very useful.
We also had another fascinating experience when Didi took her homeopathic medicines out to one of the far villages and saw over 90 people. It would be good to try to raise some funds for a mobile ambulance and doctor. That is a very big project.
Things for future volunteers to take with them:
- Candles and matches.
- Wet wipes and toilet tissue plus bags to put dirty ones in (so that they can be taken to be burnt outside the enclosure).
- Lots of paper and colouring pencils, crayons and watercolour paints. The children love to colour and paint. (I took the story of the Hungry Caterpillar and we did lots of work from that).
- Also, some English reading books. I wish I had taken more of them which I have belonging to my daughter when she was little. She is now 18.
We tried to provide lots of opportunity for speaking English with games and role play. Please and Thank you and sorry featured in one cafe scene which we devised and the older girls enjoyed that.
The girls were so affectionate and I have some lovely cards. They all seem to say: Don't forget us. How could I ever, after such an experience? Maybe one day I shall be able to go back.
Didi Taparoti was great fun when we were taken by jeep to see the Dadas place and the hospital and the memorial. We had a burst tyre and she led us across the fields on a short cut. I followed her and we did laugh because we were climbing banks and getting tangled in branches. The others seemed to find a much easier route!
Didi Schsismata (wrong spelling, I know) was lovely and gracious and always smiling.
Thank you for the opportunity. We are in Darjeeling, leaving here tomorrow and then from Calcutta to England. I don't know how I shall adjust.
Very best wishes and I shall be in touch soon.
Didi Deni <denise715goodson@btinternet.com>
News Archives
Personal Experiences
From Ellie at Uma Nivas
Hi!
I was meant to email you when I came back and tell you how much I enjoyed the project, but have been very busy working in Edinburgh.
There are very few things that I can fault from my experience at Uma Nivas. The girls were all lovely. We got lots of responsibility and were able to teach how we felt best. Didi was so kind and helpful and gave us a lot of individual attention, if there was anything that we wanted to learn (i.e. yoga and meditation). Sunita was wonderful and looked after us so well; it was great to be eating proper Indian food. You could definitely see where your money was going, and I thought the girls are getting an amazing education in such a range of subjects from the Didis, including dance, music and exercises, which I think is so important.
One piece of advice for other volunteers is to bring teaching aids, i.e. books, coloured pens and paper, stickers, toys. Anything to make the girl's lessons fun and interesting. There is nothing like that available at Uma Nivas, so it should be recommended to bring your own.
I hope that I have been of some help. Please, email back and let me know how I can further help in anyway. I am very keen to visit everybody again, hopefully next summer.
Best wishes,
Ellie
Letter from Cassie, English volunteer at Mutathara and Palkulangra Primary School:
Having had voluntary experience working in secondary schools and with babies in various countries of the world, I wanted to have a new experience of working with primary school students. So when my friend Helen asked me to go with her to India to work in primary schools there, I jumped at the chance. We lived in Mutathara School with Didi and Diipthi, who were lovely and very welcoming. We taught English, Art, General Science, Social studies, Maths and General Studies to the children, all of whom were very cute, although not all well-behaved! However, this just added to the challenge. I particularly enjoyed teaching Art and Science, but found it quite difficult to teach the children Maths, mainly because I had to do this in English, and this was not their primary language. Helen and I also helped paint the outside wall in the garden and began to draw on some designs such as flowers and butterflies. Sadly it rained quite a lot while we were there so we never got to finish it, but hopefully future volunteers will continue our work.
At weekends, Helen and I got to travel to areas near to Trivandrum. One of our favourite experiences was going to Neyyar Dam elephant rehabilitation sanctuary where we got to play with young elephants and ride on an adult female elephant. We also travelled for two weeks after our voluntary experience around the state of Kerala and parts of Tamil Nadu, all of which was lots of fun! The food in Southern India is great. One of my particular favourites is Masala Dosa!
I enjoyed my time in India and want to thank Didi and Diipthi for looking after us and taking us to places like Kanyakumari on day trips. We had a lot of fun, with many an anecdote to tell, and I would definitely like to come back to India in the future, particularly the North to see how different it is from the South.
Lots of love to Didi, Diipthi, Malati and the students,
Cassie
Many more children still need our help
There are still many more schools in need. Several schools still don't have water, electricity, doors or windows in the classrooms. One heavily overcrowded school is about to be evicted from a rented building and the principal cannot find a new building to rent. So she wants to buy land and build a permanent school building. Another had its walls and roof badly damaged in the recent Orissa cyclones and needs urgent repairs. And so on…
If you would like to help out, by volunteering or by sponsoring a child or helping us to fundraise, please do let us know. We cannot do it alone! WE NEED YOU!
How you can Help…
You could volunteer at one of our projects.
You could help us fundraise:
- You could give a gift of love to a poor child in India from our
gift catalogue
- help us to sell Christmas cards.
We got two beautiful Christmas cards donated by the winners of a school
Christmas card competition held in Japan last year. Together with two
cards painted by our orphans we are planning to print sets of 4
Christmas cards for next Christmas. If anyone would like to help sell
them, please contact
- help us fundraise by holding an auction, arrange a sponsored walk, swim or bike ride.
Maybe there are also many other ways of fundraising that we haven't thought of...