People Voices To Save Girl Child & Educate Girl Child In India

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Hand Wash Soaps for School Children in Villages

Think about washing your hands; think about getting a glass of water, flushing the toilet, wash your hands with hands soaps... These are all things that most of us consider pretty essential to maintaining good personal hygiene to prevent water communicable diseases, right?

Now imagine that you were born into different circumstances. This is what life is like for millions of people in India’s most marginalised communities every single day. But with your help, we can change this.

In India, diarrhoea alone causes more than 1,600 deaths every 24 hours. At the root of this, more often than not, are unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) practices and facilities.

Page link : https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/hand-wash-soaps-for-school-children-in-villages/x/2617105#/comments 

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BENEFITS OF CULTURAL EXCHANGE

Talking about multicultural education may seem repetitive and

redundant if we refer the discourse to a privileged school context,

attended by students belonging to wealthy families. The discourse

may change if we consider a different type of schools, particularly

schools with a huge lack of benefits, facilities and materials. Children belonging to the poorest quarters or villages often attend this kind of schools; their chance to learn is limited to school possibilities. Any other kind of knowledge is not affordable or very difficult to obtain. Associations like HEEALS, not only give them a general knowledge

about basic habits that helps to maintain them healthy, but also give them the chance to be in contact with interns coming from all over the world. This contact is the bridge that introduces them to all worlds’

cultures, without travel. One of the first results of this positive cultural contamination is the

increase of curiosity. As everybody knows, children’s mind is

particularly absorbent; that means that they can easily learn a lot of

information in different environments and situations. This is why a

contact with people coming from different culture may represent a

positive way to classify new information. This process will be

absolutely helpful to break prejudices against other culture. In fact,

often, these prejudices are caused by ignorance or lack of information

about people that come from distant countries.

During HEEALS intern's experience, children can talk with them

before and after workshops, asking them a lot of questions about

family, habits and lifestyle. This kind of conversation brings children

in contact with intern's country, breaking boundaries and prejudices.

Another point in favour of this working method is that kids may be

more likely to listen to someone that can catch them through curiosity

and different aspect ore behaviour. Sometimes, in fact, happens that

intern have new ideas or tricks to catch child’s attention such as

games, songs or dances that comes from intern's country.

The result of this working method is already showing good effects. In

fact, meeting a new intern children start to ask questions and to

compare different country characteristics and peculiarity. In this way

they not only are able to compare their own experience with other

countries reality, but also they can make a comparison between two

different countries on the base of intern's stories and habits.

In the end, it is important to mention the importance of the mutual

personal growth. Indeed, children are not the only beneficiaries of

this method; interns have also the big chance to actually experience

children's reality. These benefits not only have a positive influence on

intern's studies and research, but also on his personal and emotional

sphere.

-Laura

PRIVATE SCHOOLS AND GOVERNAMENTAL SCHOOLS

In recent years, India's economical growth improved continuously,

ameliorating the society livelihood and lifestyle. But, what about the

education system? The governmental efforts in order to improve and

increase literacy in the last century, since the independence, allowed

to the population to engage in schools and universities as never

before. But, there is still a gap between the private and the

governmental schools.

From an administrational point of view, we just can say that an

obstacle to a successful management of a governmental school is the

paperwork and the bureaucracy that involves all steps of work.

One of the main differences between these two kinds of schools is the

infrastructure issue. The construction of a public school is often new

and well maintained; while for the governmental the situation may be

more critical. May happens that in this type of schools there is a lack of

electricity, water, sanitation items and facilities. The electricity issue

represent a problem because is involved with the possibility to have

water in bathrooms, light in classrooms, air vents or any electronic

item (that may be very helpful in order to improve student's

knowledge). This substantial difference is more evident in village area,

and may be directly connected with the nature of both kind of schools;

in fact, in a governmental schools there's no need to pay fees or taxes

to attend, schools uniforms and materials (books, exercises book and

pens) are freely provided by the government. This allow to the

poorest people to send their children to school, avoiding them child

labour.

This may be seen as a great step forward, but at the same time is

necessary to underline the different chances that have students

coming from these two kinds of schools. In fact, because of big sums of

money invested in private schools, students not only live in a more

positively competitive environment, but also have the chance to join

different extracurricular activities that make their future Curriculum

more appealing. By contrast, in governmental schools the extra

activities are more related with more material and practical activities

that aims to improve student's livelihood, such as hand washing

activities. Often, these activities aimed to improve hygienic conditions

are conducted by local NGO, such as HEEALS NGO. In recent Years,

HEEALS managed to increase the livelihood of many schools,

providing RO water filter, facilities and realising educative workshops

about hygiene and sanitation. These practical activities have a

fundamental and positive implication in their daily life, but from an

academic point of view there is a gap.

Another big issue related to the distinction between private and a

governmental school is linked to the ratio of teacher to student.

In governmental schools this ratio is often too small, there are too

many children for few teachers; this mean that classrooms are more

crowded and the quality of teaching may have negative implications

that effects student's knowledge and teacher's work quality. It's easy

to imagine how much strong should be a teacher who teaches is such a

difficult environment, playing a role that is wider that one person can

imagine.

On concluding, it is important to underline that children shouldn’t pay

the bill for economical and financial choices, the main purpose of

education is the intellectual and human growth of students.

- Grandoni Laura

Agriculture and Indian Farmer

Research work done on agriculture and Indian Farmer !

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CLOSE LINKS BETWEEN A BALANCED DIET AND MENSTRUAL HYGIENE

The strength of the relationship between a correct nutrition and a healthy

menstrual condition is often undervalued and unknown. Sometimes, in fact,

the consequences of malnutrition are pervasive and massive but also hidden.

This is why the malnutrition, specially concerning under nutrition, represents

a global challenge that requires both social and economic efforts.

Malnutrition can be seen as an outcome of bad interaction between different

agents, such as: agricultural food system, environment, health system, and

the individual-household decision making process. It is fundamental that in an

enabling environment, completed with specific intervention and programmes,

woman are allowed to have access to safe food, social safety nets, physical

and mental care, health and family planning services and water sanitation.

Moreover, all those factors contributes to the empowerment of women,

increasing their acknowledge and consciousness about nutrition and hygienic

issues.

A big role in women's empowerment is played by agriculture. In fact,

agriculture not only has effects on expenditures and consumption of food, but

also has a strong link with women's employment and their own nutrition and

health conditions. A problem related with agriculture, as findings shows, is

that farmers tend to sell more expensive and nourishing products, retaining

less expensive cereals for domestic consumption. This is why is necessary to

support an environmentally sustainable food production that includes a

diversification of products, allowing the availability of nutrient-dense foods

and small-scale livestock.

Speaking more particularly about woman’s health, we should consider the

age group between 15 and 25 years old, the younger women group among

whom fertility is more concentrated, who face the largest disadvantage in

India. This is considered a problem especially in relation to the pre-pregnant

underweight condition in India, in fact scholars affirms that approximately

42.2% of pre-pregnant women have their Body Mass Index (BMI) under

18.5kg/m2, this means that a strong percentage of Indian women before

pregnancy suffers from underweight and malnutrition.

But how this reflects on women's life? First of all, it has implication in work

capacity and productivity, regardless the work they carry out. It means that in

a work environment women in this condition may be considered less

productive. Another reflection implicates the social-physical and cognitive

sphere. Good nourishment allows developing all spheres in the most

appropriate way, in order to improve individual benefit. Finally, a very

important reflection of nourishment in women's life is related to the fetal and

child nutrition and development. An improvement of consciousness and

awareness in this field not only helps to ameliorate maternal healthcare and

safety, but also may largely reduce mortality in childhood and child's

undernourishment. In this sense, an improvement may have great reflection

on new generations learning capacity, improving the whole society.

But what does balanced diet means? A balanced diet is a correct

consumption of a large variety of food, which means that is appropriate to

consume a right quantity of various nutritious daily. An inappropriate diet may

cause healthy problems such as micronutrient deficiency, like a lack of

important vitamins and minerals, generating various types of symptoms.

In conclusion, all those evidences bring us to consider how much important

are good and healthy diet habits, balancing correctly all nourishments, in

order to ameliorate woman’s health and lifestyle.

-Grandoni Laura

Facing water sanitation practices in rural India

- Nearly 200000 children die each year due to water sanitation illnesses.

- Heeals is implementing several WASH programs in Uttar Pradesh, New Delhi and Gurgaon.

When we speak of an inadequate state of water sanitation and sanitary conditions in schools and health centers, we speak of the great example of India. The largest democracy in the world (1300 million inhabitants) where nearly 200,000 children die each year due to severe diarrhea. The World Bank estimates that 21% of communicable diseases in India are related to unsafe water and lack of hygiene practices.

Currently, 1 out of 7 people, or 946 million people in the whole world, practice open defecation. Of those who do, 9 out of 10 live in rural areas. Globally, India has the largest number of people in the world still defecating in the open: almost 600 million people.One of the TARGETS of the Sustanaible Development Goals (SDG’s) by 2030, is to achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations.

                                                                                 ©Heeals

Despite the fact that the number of schools with separate toilet facilities for girls has increased from 0,4 million in 2005-2006 to 1,36 million in 2012-2013, the number is still very low.According to the United Nations, women and girls are responsible for water collection in 80% of households without access to water on premises.

Improving sanitation is a key priority of Heeals Developing Community Network, which is implementing several WASH programs in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Haryana, encouraging the community to practice proper hand wash patterns to decrease illnesses caused by unhealthy water conditions. Heeals will launch a campaign of crowdfunding for distributing hand soaps in some schools in western Uttar Praddesh.

Join us to reach our target, we need your help!

Jorge Latorre

Source : 

 United Nations report about “SDG nº6: Clean Water and Sanitation”. http://in.one.un.org/page/sustainable-development-goals/sdg-6/

2 World Bank report about “Waterlife: Improving Access to Safe Drinking Water in India”. Madhapur, Hi Tech City, Hyderabad, India 2017. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/586371495104964514/pdf/115133-WP-P152203-PUBLIC-17-5-2017-12-28-1-WaterlifeCaseApril.pdf

3 United Nations report about “Sustainable Development Goal 6”. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg6