 |
 |
|||
| |
||||
 |
 |
REHABILITATION CENTRE FOR CHILDREN (RCFC) PLAYGROUND FOR PHYSICALLY CHALLENGED CHILDREN Over the years, we have had a close relationship with the Rehabilitation Centre for Children, whose founder was the Late Jane Webb. It has an Outdoor, Indoor, Surgical unit, X – ray dept, Prosthetic and Orthopedic unit as well as a free Primary School all within its campus. Sonia, all of 12 years, perpetually smiling but physically challenged, lives in our Rainbow Home. She needed correctional surgery on her hip and knees. After being successfully operated on, Sonia continued with the Rehabilitation programme at the RCFC. Due to the subsequent visits and interactions we realized that RCFC needed a Children’s Park, but due to paucity of funds we could not realize their dreams. Mr. Ray O’Brien, an American gentleman, who heard about Loreto Sealdah and our village programme, requested to be allowed to go out to the villages. He was struck by the lack of games apparatus of all the village schools and offered S. M. Cyril the money to provide equipment for them. This was done to the intense joy of all. Later he came with funding to create a playground, so S. M. Cyril chose RCFC because of the number of challenged children they cater to and especially our little Sonia who needed her legs straightened. Sonia has since returned to Loreto Sealdah healed and happy. Ray was very delighted to get an opportunity to do something for the challenged children and came all out to support the idea. And so we began work in May, 06. At first, we cleared the bushes and thick undergrowth where we found lots of snakes and mongooses. According to the RCFC’s selection we placed six concrete durable swings, slides, round-abouts, which are challenged child friendly. A lot of sitting arrangements were made around the trees. Our Rainbows with our art teacher, Utpal Bandhyapadhya, went out to paint murals on the surrounding walls and involved the residents of RCFC in the painting. The result – a beautiful colourful playground surrounded by a wall with giraffe, deer, elephants, zebra looking out from among the greenery, flowers and bushes with bright coloured swings, slides and even trees. A foundation stone placed in the playground area, reads : “This playground has been donated to the children of RCFC, Behala by the Pittsfield, New Hampshire Rotary Club and Children are Angels from Heaven, Boston MA. The playground is named DRAKE FIELD in honour of a beautiful Children’s Park in Pittsfield, New Hampshire (USA) where children and adults laugh and play together. Construction facilitated by Loreto Sealdah”. The park was declared open by Mr. Ray O’Brien, in a colourful programme, which included dances, songs and skits by the RCFC and Rainbow children and a delicious party with samosas, ice creams, sweets and a huge cake decorated as a park. The children’s eyes were wide with wonder as they gathered round to see the cake cut. Avijit Mazumdar Hidden Domestic Child Labour 30 HDCLs have been admitted into the formal schools in June 06. Two HDCLs Indira Hela and Anjali Shaw have completed their vocational training in Tailoring and beautician and have received their certificates. 14 HDCLs who have sat for their exams at Usha Sewing Centre are awaiting for their results. Among them five have joined tailoring shops and have started earning a decent living. We held an awareness campaign with 40 supervisors and Child Development and Protection Officers of the ICDS centres of the Department of Social Welfare and Women and Child Development- Govt. of West Bengal in May 06 at Loreto Sealdah . This programme gave an insight to the CDW on how we can involve the ICDS centres in monitoring the drop out rates of girls in their centres. The teachers also decided to hold discussions regarding child labour with the mothers at the mothers meet. A State Level Consultation along with our partner organizations and Save the Children U.K was held at Max Muller Bhavan in June 06 where many eminent personalities had joined in to raise the issue of CDW in Hazardous conditions. Recently the Centre has passed a law banning Child Labour below the age of 14 years in domestic households and eateries. To make this issue more public Save The Children organized a press conference at Delhi and two of our hardworking students - Paromita Chakraborty and Debparna Lahiri attended the conference along with others. While recognizing that the law which has been passed has its good side - that all children below 14 years will not be allowed to do any work, on the other hand, according to our Constitution, anyone below 18 years is a child , so what about those children from 14 -18 years - does the law give them a license to work ? The majority are girls and this age is the most vulnerable age for abuse. We organized two sensitization programmes in Loreto Sealdah in August 06 for teachers from 27 Govt. schools and 14 private schools from three districts of West Bengal- Howrah, North and South 24 Prganas and they have been requested to monitor the drop out rate of girls, and get as many as possible into school. Christine D’Rozario
|
 |
|
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
| |
||||
| |
||||
