Children in Difficult Circumstances: An Action Oriented Intervention Project in Mayurbhanj, a district in North Orissa, during 2010-2011 Financial Year:

After remaining dormant for so many years we decided to work for the Children in difficult circumstances. India has the largest number of Children in difficult circumstances in the world. Children in difficult circumstances in our programme included Child labourers, destitute children, and orphans, neglected and ill treated children.

A special Intervention programme was launched in Orissa in July, 2010. The aim of this programme was to help these children overcome their difficulties and bring them in to the mainstream by improving their educational, health facilities.

Child Labour (Domestic Help) in the Unorganised Sector
We have rescued the girl child labour/ child worker and brought her to our children’s home. Among the children 5 (five) were irregular school goers and 5 (five) were non starters, and 1 (one) was a drop out. All these were in the primary level.
All the inmates in the children’s home are destitute (lost either father or mother), orphans, (some have lost both the parents) majority of them were either neglected or ill treated.
Intervention Benefits

Various intervention programmes were drawn up according to the needs of the children but most important is education programme.
We have admitted 14 (fourteen) children (11 (eleven) girls & 3 (three) boys) in our children’s home during 2010-2011 financial year.
Out of 14 (fourteen) children, 3 (three) are for adoption. We started with a 17 hour old baby and approximately 4 month Old girls. As soon as we received the children we rushed to the District Head Quarter Hospital and put the Children in Intensive Care Unit and the Children are with us and we are looking for families.

We have admitted 5 Children (4 Girls and 1 Boy) in Debendrapur Primary School, run by the State.
The Organisation has also rescued one child labour, brought to the Children’s Home, and is taking care of the Food, Accommodation, Clothing, Educational and Medical Expenses of the Children. Without our intervention the Children would not have any access to education.
We had also organized picnic and outings, organized annual sports meet and celebration of different festivals during the year under the report.
Empowering the Girls through Education:

Children’s Education through Sponsorship Programme:
We have started supporting school going as well as irregular school going children in addition to our normal programme for the children with the objective of reducing the drop out rate due to poverty. We contacted some schools through our staff and identified the needy girl child. We provided educational kits (Scale, Pencil, Crayon, Drawing copy, sharpener, Eraser, Pen, Geometry Box, Pencil Box, Books, Guide Books, Test Papers, Note books, School Bag including copies for handwriting in Oriya as well as in English. The works started in 16 schools and covering 219 children including two minority schools where the need was most urgent. Out of 219 children 10 are boys and 209 are girls from Class I to Class X i.e. 6 to 15 years age group. By March it has been expanded to 21 schools touched 316 children. Out of which 10 are boys and 306 are girls and covered 3 blocks namely, Bangriposi, Kuliana and Baripada. Other than that we have also covered 8 schools under Baripada Municipality.