Relief Projects India focuses on female empowerment and rights. This work began when we were asked to assist a baby-rescue home near Madurai that was involved in taking in unwanted baby girls.
Once we had completed three years there with our renovations, innovations and training projects in the home, we branched out to work in some of the villages where many of the babies were coming from, in an attempt to spread awareness of the value of the female child.
Since expanding our work into the villages, Relief Projects India's initiatives have grown and evolved. We started in 2009 with free tuition centres for government school children with the intention of helping government school children, especially girls, to remain school and to get better grades. We also began awareness programs for the parents, aimed especially at encouraging them to let their daughters complete their education. Along with awareness on the value of the female, our programs expanded to tackle social and health issues prevalent in this area, and now include such as HIV andTB awareness, healthy mother and baby meetings, haemoglobin checks for adolescent girls and even for children. Now we are frequently called upon by local government agencies, such as ICDS (Integrated Child Development Service,) the TB department and Family Planning Services (FPS), as well as local colleges and high schools, to help them animate awareness programs.
In 2009 we also obtained permission from the ICDS to start working in a few village government-run day-care centres, (anganwadis) where we brought in educational supplies and training. Relief Projects India sends a staff member twice a week to train the ayahs and work directly with the children.
In 2015, we opened Mountain View Nursery and Primary School to give some of the poorer families the opportunity to provide a good English-medium education to their children. We initiated the school program to provide an opportunity for a quality early education to the children of these disadvantaged families, especially their girls.
Please go to our Projects page to learn more about the above programs.
