Providing Education & Training to Women in India

Dear Supporter,

The Education project is well into its summer sessions at Santhom, Don Bosco orphanage and Pratyasha Bhavan orphanage. The kids have been learning science, maths, English, sports, drama and sex education for the next 8 weeks – and number of children attending is increasing by the day! We have also begun swimming lessons with the children: a whole week of swimming glory has passed that the children have absolutely loved! Thanks to our sports volunteer, Arnaud, for his amazing hard work. We are looking forward to our next swimming week in 2 weeks.

 Santhom after school club

Since September 2014 GVI India have been supporting Watharuthy Settlement in West Cochin, delivering freshly prepared sessions alongside homework help and one-to-one tuition for 20 children, 2 evenings per week. Supporting the existing teacher, who had previously been delivering sessions each weekday we saw excellent progress in the children’s communicative level.

However following volunteer feedback and locating greater need within a separate community GVI decided to set up its own separate after school club within Santhom colony, where we already deliver vocational training for ladies, run weekly eye clinics in conjunction with a local hospital and we are rebuilding an entire section of the colony.

Beginning with locating a suitable space to conduct lessons, liaising with local residents and the councillor we procured access to the community centre and established that there was a desire for these sessions. The next job was rounding up some students!

Our first evening was fantastic with 28 children turning up to register and be grouped, along with many interested parents and bystanders, eager to see what we were doing, the following session saw a drop to 23 children which has held steadily for the last 4 weeks, our volunteers have done an amazing job, together we have split the children into 3 distinct levels, grouped by ability and provided high-quality original lessons to each group each week.

Moving forward GVI will continue to deliver these bi-weekly sessions and are currently establishing whether we will have the manpower to also deliver sessions to adults within the settlement, in addition to all this throughout the summer holidays GVI will be working on the settlement 3 days per week throughout the day, providing the children with structure, education and fun all through the summer break.

Thank you for your continued support.

All the best

GVI India

Links:

• www.gvi.org