Empower 450 Vulnerable Children & Families

Dear Supporter,

Thank you for your continued support which means even more now than ever!

In Mauritius, just like everywhere else in the world, the past few months have been unique. Due to Covid-19, we have been confined for two months and a half, with schools closed more than 3 months and a half. In this context, we had to reinvent our interventions.

As we could no longer reach children in schools, we decided to reach them through their parents. From the safety of our homes, we have created artistic activities to help children express themselves, and know their rights and responsibilities. These activities have been shared with parents online, and they are currently shared with volunteers on the field, now that we are no longer locked down.

Online meetings with parents were carried out so as to support them in this difficult time. Together, we discussed the issues they were facing regarding the education of their children, in this particular context. As we are working with vulnerable families, for many of them, internet access is limited, which prevented many children to access educational resources. We also organised training and sharing online sessions for parents on parenting skills, to help them navigate this difficult time.

As vulnerable children have had less access to educational materials than others, the educational gap will have grown after more than 3 months away from school. This is why we are training parents so that they can carry out afterschool activities with children in the community when schools reopen.

Since the end of the lockdown, our art facilitators have also been on the field to reach 25 children from vulnerable families. These families have been evicted from their homes from one day to the other, with no solution provided by the State, while Mauritius was still under lockdown. TIPA has designed specific activities so as to help these children process this overwhelming situation while having a good time. We have also been distributing basic kits of artistic materials to parents so that they can carry out activities with their children.

While we will go back to schools as soon as possible after their reopening on the 1^st of July, we will ensure that vulnerable children receive extra support through their parents and the community so as to reduce the educational gap which we fear has grown during the lockdown: afterschool activities with trained parents from the community will be organised, while we will continue to organise online support groups for parents.

We hope we can count on your support in these challenging times for NGOs funding, so that we can continue to reach children who need it the most.

Links:

• TIPA's 2019 Annual Report
• Artistic activity
• Artistic Activity