We have visited a few projects. Here is what we have observed and discovered.
1. Freedom Foundation HIV/AIDS Hospital
We have met Sheila Bennett from England who originally came to Bangalore with i-to-I when she retired. She returned to work as a volunteer in an HIV/AIDS hospital. The hospital is on the outskirts of Bangalore and has a ward for critically ill, men�s, women�s and children�s wards, a clinic, a room for counselling and a kitchen.
The building is converted from chicken sheds. Sheila lives in a nearby flat and does anything that needs to be done, cleaning, washing and massaging patients and doing absolutely everything for the very sick including mediating for them.
Most patients have contracted HIV/AIDS through heterosexual relationships. Men have slept with other women and then infected their wives and unborn children. People admitted to the hospital have to have a carer. For the men this is often their wife!
There are drugs available but not a great variety and they are very expensive. There are many deaths at the hospital. The hospital gets a small donation from Karnataka state but relies on donations and it has a constant battle to keep going.
During our visit, Deborah made cards with the women patients who were well enough. They enjoyed this and stuck the results on the walls or at the side of their beds. John joined in the afternoon men�s exercises led by Sheila.
Such a huge stigma is attached to HIV/AIDS that it has been a great battle to persuade schools to accept the children.
One of the doctors is trying, together with Sheila, to raise around 50,000 pounds to build a further complete HIV/AIDS hospital, enabling them to run a facility giving the best of care and counselling possible. They have already promises for nursing and counselling care and have the land. Sheila is an inspiration although she would deny it.
2. The Sheila Kohavala Institute for The Deaf
We visited this institute where there are children from age 2� to 18 from a variety of backgrounds. Some don�t get food at home and the teachers bring in meals to give them. Others are from better off families.
They are mostly profoundly deaf and wear large, old-fashioned hearing aids in both ears with batteries for each one carried in their pockets. These are plugged in every morning and unplugged as they leave school.
The school is well resourced (although lines have to be drawn on paper using carbon paper) and relatively clean with desks and chairs. A speech therapist comes in regularly and there are classroom assistants, mostly Indian volunteers to help one-to-one. Some of the children have multiple disabilities and some are autistic. The dedication of the teachers is amazing. The children learn to sign and pronounce words. They are well disciplined. As there is not much speech, the school seems orderly and quiet.
Volunteers observe in the mornings, learn signing, sometimes help one-to-one, and then play with the children in the afternoons.
The children, especially the little ones, are so cute. We went in for � day to observe. They try really hard and one or two will, each year, get to university. The types of job they will get are often with printing presses and, if bright, working with computers. A lot of them are deaf due to close inter-marriage to first cousins etc.
One Saturday evening we attended a performance by children from the institute and also from schools/homes for the blind, disabled and young women in crisis. Such a lot of work had gone into the cultural dances and singing, it was inspirational. We clapped in sign language, waving both hands.
3. Parikrma School
This was founded by a highly successful Indian businesswoman Shukla Bose who decided to �do more� with her finances.
The school is open to 5 � 12 year old children from the slums. To qualify for entry, the parents must earn under a threshold wage of Rs.1500 per month (around 19 pounds sterling).
92% of the pupils come from alcoholic families of which 65% are male. Many fathers have another wife and children and cannot support either family. Many of the children are sponsored locally or internationally, costing about 50p per day which provides all meals, otherwise they would have no food. 45 of them were picked up on the main road in the city centre where they were living without a home. These children will be the first in their families to go to a school. Other children have been rescued from brothels. There is also an orphanage connected with the school.
The ethos of the school is wonderful. Children are at the �centre� and looked after holistically. It is a bright and colourful place of refuge and friendship as well as providing learning. It gives them a good start in life away from the traumas they otherwise would have to face.
The website for Parikrma is www.parikrmafoundation.org
4. Auxilium Navajeevana
We visited another project where some of the girls we teach at GKBMS live in a hostel called Auxilium Navajeevana which means �New Life�. This was established in 1997 as a crisis intervention centre. The girls are from 5 � 18 years old and were street children abandoned by parents, sexually abused, daughters of prostitutes, child labour, runaways, uncared for, ignored and shunned. Girls in India have lower status than boys with fewer rights. Although much has changed, education, food, love & care for a girl child are often considered to be a waste of money. A son is seen as an asset, a daughter as a liability. Major reasons for preferring sons are to continue the family lineage, perform funeral ceremonies, to contribute to family income and support parents in old age.
Female foeticide is a relatively recent practice and many cannot afford the cost of proper medical procedures in hospital.
Female infanticide means girls being killed after birth, either in the first few hours or, more slowly, by neglect.
Child sex is a fast growing business in India with daughters often forced into prostitution by their mother or sold by trafficking networks.
Girls are often put to work in the home or in factories. If this is seen as �helping� their mother, it is not punishable under the child labour act.
Child marriage is still performed in some parts of India. In rural areas, a girl may become a mother between 12 and 16. If her husband dies, she is cursed and blamed for his death and expected to spend the rest of her life in penance and be exploited by family and society.
The Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 prohibits giving and receiving of a dowry but is still often practiced. Dowry is one of the reasons that the birth of a girl is not valued as highly since her family must �purchase� her groom. The woman�s only worth is in terms of the material goods and property that she carries into the marital home. Once she outlives that value, she becomes reduced to an object that may be disposed of and destroyed.
Navajeevana�s goal is to �bring hope & dignity to the lives of girls by empowering them to become self-reliant, enable them to join the mainstream of society as dignified, responsible, healthy, contributing citizens�.
The girls are brought to the hostel by the police, come via �Childline� and are picked up by the Silesian Sisters who run the home.
It ensures better living and the experience of a home and helps to protect them.
Counselling is provided, education, sponsorship for bright students, vocational training, outings, sports and cultural activities. The girls make wonderful, hand embroidered greetings cards which they are attempting to sell to contacts around the world. They also make soft toys, do screen printing and knitting. Integration back into families sometimes happens.
We have little idea what horrors these girls we teach may have endured. To interact with them is our privilege and we are thankful that at least a few of them are loved and cared for.
(This information has been largely reproduced from the home�s leaflet)