Mahadeva Project

Søndag, 09 Maj 2010 11:02 Senest opdateret den Fredag, 14 Maj 2010 13:58 Skrevet af Niranjan Kandiah

Project proposal

Mahadeva ProjectIntroduction

Child development and welfare includes social, physical, intellectual, creative and emotional welfare. For a child to be a good product to the community early proper education plays a central role among various other factors.

Background

Jaffna had been suffering from war and displacement for the past 30 years, creating permanently displaced and disabled population - which is still looking up to rebuild a new life. Children were mostly affected due to disrupted education and poor nutritional status. Even now people who are displaced face serious concerns in health and education sectors.

About our club

We, the University students, to create a positive impact in the society, decided to form a club which will meet the spiritual, educational, health needs of the society. ‘Dawn of Humanity’ – is a youth led, youth run initiative, whose aim is to bring about positive and sustainable change to issues that affect children and their communities in Jaffna.

The club initiated its work in 2003 with those who were selected to the Universities in Srilanka from Jaffna – mainly to the Jaffna university. Our first project was to return the school drop outs of Kannaki and Sabapathipillai welfare centres back to their schools and to enhance their talents in extra-curricular activities. We motivated the people to encourage their children to complete at least to the GCE O/L level. We have been conducting various competitions in important Hindu festivals such as Sivaraththri, Thai pongal, Tamil New year and Navaraththri. The prizes were given with the aid of small institutions which boosted the children to concentrate more in their studies. We reactivated the night classes which were initially conducted in the community centre hall and funded for the salaries of two teachers. In 2009, Mahadeva learning centre Hall – a initiative of our club, funded by Uduvil AGA was built and declared open - to conduct the classes and to store learning materials for the students. At present we are in need of providing electricity and computer facilities to upgrade our services.

Apart from these two welfare centres we are also now funding to run free tution classes for economically poor children at Karaipiran community centre in Aanaikoddai.

These learning centres are now helping the students to revise their subjects with the guidance of a teacher. Most of the parents of these children are illiterate and unable to help their child with proper education. Our project helped the students to come over this problem.

Health educating the people of various communicable and non-communicable diseases is an important aspect in developing the health status of a community. As part of its project, our club has conducted exhibitions during the Nallur Murugan Mahotsava period for the past two years. We have also started ‘Maanidan Health Centre’ at Temple road (behind Nallur Murugan Temple) which we believe will function as a resource centre to meet the health needs of the society.

Now we are collecting data of orphans and economically poor children who have returned to Jaffna aftermath of the terrifying war in 2009. We have plans of supporting them financially for their education or to join them in an orphanage and support their education.

Rationale

For the past 7 years, our club is involved in upgrading the socio-economic status of the pockets of communities which are under-privileged or affected due to internal displacement by concentrating in two crucial sectors – Health and education.

We are currently running 4 learning centres for the children and are in need to start new centres for children returned from Wanni. During our survey we found that they are in need of capacity building and support for their education.

Objectives

1. To reduce the number of school drop outs by increasing the interest of the parents and children towards education.

2. To improve the school performance of the children.

3. To overcome problems faced by students in meeting their demands in education by helping them financially and give social support to them.

4. Improve the health qualities indirectly by promoting their educational status.

5. To mobilize the people and make them to actively involve in social activities to develop their socio economic status.

Methodology

1. Learning centre and mobilization of community members

First the village will be identified and volunteers from the community will be encouraged to form a group which will be lead by the teacher who will be in-charge of the learning centre. The group will be responsible to identify the needy children and promote their educational activities.

Initially they will re-evaluate and report on the number of students who are following private classes, those who have dropped out from schools, those who are willing to follow the night classes and assess their school performance.

The group will, in future, look after the attendance of the students to the night classes, find out the root cause of their absence and try to influence them to follow the classes regularly.

A teacher who will also be from the same community will be appointed after reviewing their bio data for selected subjects.

Review- An attendance book will be maintained by the teachers. The representative from each family group will also maintain a record and note down the weekly attendance of the students of their families and also any other problems identified. The officer in charge from our club will be visiting the centre once a fortnight to monitor their activities and look into their problems.

A monthly review meeting is held by our club and the teacher will be invited to attend it and discuss the progress of the centre.

2. Financial support

Financial support will be provided to the needy children to buy their educational tools. The field officer will identify and evaluate the child according to the following scoring system and report to the committee.