Charity field report from Faridabad, India

SOS Children's Village Faridabad Helps Poor and Deprived Women

The strengthening motherhood programme was started by SOS Children India in 2003, with an objective to help single mothers with limited means of livelihood, unable to provide proper feeding and schooling for their children. The programme has successfully completed two years and presently the mothers are able to provide a better life to their children, including proper food and education.

In India by and large the husband is the bread earning member in the family. With his death the wife and children are left without any resources to support them. Being illiterate and poor it is hard for the mothers to give their children even sufficient food. Education and medical care is far beyond their reach.

Keeping in view the plight of the most disadvantaged women SOS Children's Villages of India started the strengthening motherhood programme to help these women break the vicious cycle of poverty and to enable them to provide their children with education and medical facility.

The support
Presently SOS Children's Village Faridabad grants help to five mothers to support their children. Under the programme rupees five hundred per month (approx. US$ 12) is budgeted for each child in the family. This money is meant for education and medical needs.

One of the educational co-worker visits the family once a month to know about the progress in education. The co-worker also advices the mother on health and nutrition of children, in addition to this the mothers are guided and helped if possibilities of better earning exist for them.

Story of Pushpa
Pushpa is a widow who lives in a single rented room with her two children. Her husband was a daily wage earner who died a few years back due to throat cancer. After his death financial difficulties surrounded Pushpa; whatever savings the family had were spent by Pushpa on the treatment of her husband. Being illiterate she had no choice but to work as a maid in a house where she earned rupees 1,200 per month (approx. US$ 27). With this small amount she could barely provide food to her kids and was unable to send them to school.

A nearby doctor advised her to approach SOS Children's Village Faridabad for help. The village director considered her case and she was provided assistance under the strengthening motherhood programme. Today her kids go to school and the family is living decently.

"SOS Children's Village Faridabad has changed my children's life. It was my husband's desire that the children should receive education. Now I feel proud when they go to school. This programme is a boon for women like me", said Pushpa.

SOS Children has been working in India since 1963 and has over 35 children's villages which provide a family for life to children in need. The SOS Children's Village at Faridabad gives a family to more than sixty children while in the wider community around 1,500 children and their families are given practical support in areas such as training workshops and health counselling.

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