The 11 children (5 girls and 6 boys) who passed the SSC examination this year are the first in their families who have crossed the hurdle of school final. These children as well as their parents are very happy and proud of their success. Among these children 6 boys and 3 girls were born in brothels and 2 girls comes from slum areas. All of them are growing up in a PWRDF & CIDA funded and Shelter home with a dream to be a part of the society where no one can point them out for their past. These children could have never imagined about this success as they only have experienced poverty, filthy living conditions and their mothers were always absent and had no time to look after them. During times of illness, when they need their mothers most, even then they are aware of their rights and situation of their mothers. They all want to ensure a secure job for themselves so that they would be able to break the vicious cycle of their mothers' lives and make them free from the social curse. Now they want to be Computer Engineers, Nurses or Social Workers and receive training of various trade courses which will be also helpful for them to move forward.
Mukul (the highest GPA achiever among all children from the centre, who passed SSC) said, "I am not satisfied with myself because I expected a better GPA than 4.56 but I am happy to get the opportunity to enrol at college and continue my education. I believe I could achieve GPA 5 in HSC examination." His remarks represent the determination of these children to prosper in life.
The Project is not only providing rehabilitation support for the most disadvantaged children of Jessore, but also trying to ensure poor women's involvement in income generating activities, make them aware about their rights, capacitive them to run their own organisation in a sustainable way and promote their children's education. The above success story is just a glimpse of the bigger target of this project. The project is continuing the regular activities like: skill training for the community women, operating community learning centres, training for the community learning centre facilitators, day observation, linkages with legal service providers and small enterprises to establised women's rights and explore income opportunity for them and workshops with local employers for future job placement of the shelter home children etc. Another reason for celebration was that 5 community learning centres' children received a government scholarship for their performance in primary level completion examination.
Children's Haven Programme
This is a small intervention which is supplementing the work of operating shelter home for 100 children. The project is bearing partial expenses of the children's food, clothin, personal hygiene, medicine and salary of some shelter home maintenance workers.
Health Interventions
Health Awareness and Education
Ignorance and traditional practices are barriers to seek appropriate medical support, or taking preventative measures. Health awareness training, group discussions and seminars were organised to transfer knowledge of health issues on regular basis. Poor communities were also motivated to take responsibility for community health and to create access to health care services through their groups and organisations. The health training included Pregnancy, Anti Natal & Post Natal Care, Child Health, Immunization, Reproductive Health, Diarrhoea, Personal Hygiene and Sanitation, use of safe drinking water and sanitation. This year free oral saline, de-working tablet etc. were also distributed among programme members.
Linkages among the group members and different service providers like Government hospitals, Social Welfare Departments, Legal Organisations, NGOs and their clinics etc has been establised so that the members are gaining access to different services. Besides these they are getting assistance for tube-well and sanitary latring installation from local govt. bodies and DPHE. Moreover, effective linkages help the members to receive healthcare facilities from the government healthcare centres.
Nutrition is basic need for every human being and providing support to ensure nutrition for the children and women through nutritional education, promotion of homestead gardening and practical demonstration for cooking nutritional food. Regular sessions on Nutrition are held in group meetings and a total of 351210 women members received nutrition training this year.
