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Dec'06 - May'07 - Dec'07
A Journey Towards Empowerment
Baghajatin Rail Colony
Even though we and many other NGOs are trying to help the street children the hemorrhage from the outskirts of the city continues with a virtual flood of children arriving in daily to take the place of those whom we lift off the streets. If we are to solve the problem on street children, we need to move out into the surrounding areas to see where they come from and to take action to change the conditions which have forced them to come.
For this reason our first social activity centre was started at Baghajatin Rail Colony on 18th July 2007. It has now taken shape and is running smoothly with the help of six trained teachers and the local community.
The day school has started on 18th July 2007. It has approximately 100 students and two teachers who received training through Barefoot Teachers Training programme from Loreto Day School, Sealdah.
School timing is 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. An attendance register is maintained for both students and teachers. The School is provided with sufficient teaching aids, books and stationery.
Instead of keeping the centre idle, community has started an evening activity centre as the community children hardly have any space for games and recreation.
They are provided with sufficient indoor games, like ludo, two carom boards, balls, ten sets of jigsaw puzzles, etc.
Along with the evening activity centre, there is class for very weak children and the children who cannot make it to the morning class. The evening activity centre timing is 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. and is taken care of by one of the trained teacher.
The Adult Literacy Programme is taken care of by another trained teacher. Presently, there are around 15 mothers who are attending classes regularly.
Evening classes are from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Since there is no electricity in the community, they are provided with an emergency lamp. They are also provided with sufficient Adult Education Books and stationery.
Soon we will organize various awareness programmes for these women, so that they can lead a more fruitful and meaningful life and can also be more efficient in bringing up their children.
In association with ‘George Telegraph’ we were able to organize a free eye checkup camp in LDS premises.
Along with the children of Rainbow Home, sixty children from Baghajatin Railway Colony have also been checked up. All the teachers from the colony managed to bring children to school by 8:30 a.m. on 29th September 2007 in our school bus.
The children with problems will be helped according to their requirement. At the end of the checkup children were provided with snacks.
In association with Indian Red Cross Society, we were able to organize a general medical camp in the community itself on 16th October 2007.
Since there was no place in the community to hold such a medical camp, the two trained social workers – Jagdev and Bappa, who received training through Barefoot Teachers Training, managed to get the ground floor of a building under construction near the colony. They made all the arrangements for doctors and patients to sit. The camp ended at 4 p.m.
It was a general medical camp where people of various age groups were checked-up by two medical practitioners. Patients were provided with antibiotics, tablets, cough syrups, etc. Two of the seriously ill patients were referred to Baghajatin General Hospital. Each patient was provided with a health card which includes their height and weight. The health cards are with the teachers and will be used for future camps.
It was a successful camp and we received full support from the community, local leaders and six trained teachers.
The two teachers who have been trained in how to survey have already discovered three other areas where we will start work shortly.
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