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Working with the St. Joseph’s Social Service Centre, Chennai, India Latest news on my Indian Project - March 2013
Hello,
My sister Ruth and I have just returned from our annual visit to the St. Joseph Centre in Chennai and it was a delight for us to be back with all the children again. This year’s visit was particularly busy as changes which were planned to improve the living conditions for the children were started. Although it was a busy time for Ruth and I, we did manage a short break for a few days to visit Kerala and Kanyakumari at the very southern tip of India where the Indian Ocean meets the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. As our flight arrived in the south of India at 6pm the pilot announced ‘Welcome to Trivandrum airport the temperature outside is a very lukewarm 31 degrees’!! On our trip down south we also took the chance to visit Pushpa a good friend who had worked at the St. Joseph Centre since my first visit. Once again I enjoyed visiting the three schools that the children of St. Joseph Centre are educated at to present the annual Sister Bakkiam Award which was set up last year in her memory. Sister Bakkiam was the founder of the St. Joseph Centre which over the years has touched the lives of thousands of children. The Centre to-day provides a home for 40 children, a day care crèche for 70 children, a refuge for women and care for the elderly. Since our visit last year ten new children have now been taken into care in the St. Joseph Centre from various parts of South India. These children are either from broken homes or orphaned children who have nowhere to call a home. I will be continuing my fund raising talks to secure the future of the children of the St. Joseph Centre and those from the poor neighbourhood area and to raise funds to improve the living conditions at the Centre. This newsletter will update you on the progress of the project since it first started in 2006, initially set up to raise funds to educate one boy. A huge thank you once again to all who have supported this project to help the ‘children of Chennai’. May God Bless all at the St. Joseph Centre and the wonderful work they do. Muriel Clean drinking water and installation of water storage facilities.
A few days after arriving
in India I met with an engineer and Joseph our ‘Little Drops Charity Trust’
Representative to discuss ways of English students studying well and a third teacher is employed.
The 27 children on the
English Education programme at Montfort School continue to progress with
their studies and all but one or two are getting a good grasp of the English
language. The Montfort School has undergone some changes over the last few
years with a new Principal and a change in the education system.
Annie settles into a new Home for HIV children.
Annie, who you will know
from my previous newsletters, suffers from various health problems which
were contracted from Hebciba’s family finally have their own bathroom & toilet.
Sponsors Day, a Picnic Day Out and treats for the children.
As Ruth and I travelled
to Chennai on Burns Day, we thought we should treat the children to a Burns
Supper. We cooked haggis,
New computer installed—proves a success.
The
computer we installed last year is proving a great success and is being used
to assist the older students
Upper floor reconstructed to include new bedrooms and toilets.
A main problem at the
Centre is that all the children and workers have to use the main hall, for
sleeping. With a number of the boys and girls now grown up this is no
longer a suitable arrangement. A large hall on the upper level was unable
to
Continuing the support of further training.
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improving the water situation at St. Joseph Centre. Many of the children's
health problems are due to the fact that they do not have access to clean
drinking water at the St. Joseph Centre. After discussions, it was decided
to install two water purifiers that can purify 60 litres of water per hour
to provide constant clean drinking water for over 100 children who are cared
for by the St. Joseph Centre. During the dry season the St. Joseph Centre
also suffers from water shortages and water has to be bought and brought in
by lorry. To solve this problem we decided to build a large underground
water storage tank and within a week of our meeting with the engineer the
work began digging the hole for the tank. Gaining access with a JCB was
impossible as the St. Joseph Centre is situated at the end of a very narrow
road so the job of digging the hole had to be undertaken manually. Five
labourers undertook the heavy work in the intense heat and completed the job
of digging a hole 8 feet deep, 12 feet wide and 15 feet long in two days.
The storage tank was then built, it was given a waterproof sealing and tiled
inside and will have the capacity to hold 2,500 litres of water. This
additional tank will make life a great deal easier as the St. Joseph Centre
will now have access to water all year round. 
All
schools in India now work from the same curriculum. The children have
adapted to the changes and are continuing to obtain good grades. This year
many of them have been made class monitors—proof they are taking an active
role in school life. With the children growing up and their school homework
load increasing I felt it was the right time to employ a third teacher to
take on some of the work load at the afterschool homework classes. I was
fortunate to find a very good teacher who speaks good English to assist with
the classes. She started work immediately and for the first three months
will work with a couple of the students who are struggling to help give them
a better grasp of English and improve their reading skills. When the new
school year starts in June she will take around nine of the students for
their daily homework classes for an hour and a half. This will make a
great difference as we will now have three smaller classes where the three
teachers will be able to devote more individual time to each of the
students. My sister Ruth who is a former teacher again spent a day at
Montfort School as a student sitting in with an VIII standard class as she
had done the previous year and enjoyed meeting up with some of her ‘school
chums’. Ruth found it interesting to be able to compare the education
system in India to that in Scotland and she was impressed with the standard
of teaching that the children were receiving. The other children living in
the St. Joseph Centre who go to the local Tamil speaking schools are also
doing well in their studies with a number of them achieving A Grades. Their
homework classes are taken by one of the Sisters working in the St. Joseph
Centre who previously taught in a Tamil school.
her mother who died shortly after Annie was born.
Annie has glycogen storage disease and was admitted to hospital last June
for a liver biopsy which sadly diagnosed her HIV positive. It was decided
that it was in the best interests of Annie’s health to move her to a Home
where she would get specialised medical treatment. We have been very
fortunate to find a wonderful Home specifically for children with HIV. The
Home which is supported by the Emirates Airlines Foundation is run in
conjunction with (CHES) an NGO. Annie is given constant medical care there
and an education which is provided on site for all the children. I was
delighted to visit Annie at the Home and find her happy and settled in a
bright and cheerful environment. She has already made many friends.
Annie’s older sister Angel and brother William continue to live at the St.
Joseph Centre and although both are missing their younger sister they were
very happy to hear that Annie was settled and being given the medical
attention she requires.
The majority of the
houses in the neighbourhood area don’t have a toilet or washing facilities
and many of the people have to walk long distances to a toilet. When
children need to use the toilet in the middle of the night parents are
having to accompany them in the darkness. Most families are living in
rented accommodation and the landlords owning the properties are unwilling
to give them that extra facility. During my house visits a number of years
ago I discovered that Hebciba’s parents had moved out of their rented
accommodation and built themselves a small home of their own. However they
were unable to provide a toilet and washroom and were still having to use
the communal toilets a great distance away. At the end of last year we sent
funds to Hebciba’s parents for them to build their own outside toilet and
washroom and when I visited them I was happy to find that the building was
almost complete apart from the rendering of the walls. The family are
delighted to now have their own bathing facilities. Although this is a
great boon to the family and has made their life a lot easier they still
have to make many daily trips to carry water from a well up a very steep
hill to their home.
neeps and tatties then Ruth and I carried it in
on a dish
singing our own Scottish song which wouldn’t have been recognisable to
anyone Scottish! The children weren’t keen to taste the haggis at first but
once one or two had tried it all were eager to have some—after they’d all
had a taste we had them queuing up for seconds! Each year when we go to
India we try to take a traditional Scottish treat for all the children and
this year Mrs Tilly’s generously donated 70 macaroon bars—the smile on wee
Charluta’s face tells you how much they enjoyed them. Last year Ruth
suggested running a Sponsors Day for all the children and it was so
successful we have
now made it an annual event. In the morning we had arts and
crafts when the
children made masks with paper plates and we had a competition when they
drew pictures of the sky, land and sea. All the masks and the pictures were
hung up around the walls to decorate the Centre. There were lunchtime
treats of Pepsi Cola, chicken 65 and ice cream. In the afternoon we gave
out their Sponsors letters, played team games and awarded prizes and medals
for the winners. Then much to the amusement of the children Ruth took up a
challenge offered to her and spoke in Tamil for two minutes! Another fun
day was had on our Annual Picnic Day when three buses were hired and 82 of
us set off to an amusement park in Chennai. After a morning enjoying the
rides we had a fabulous picnic lunch which the ladies had made. Great fun
was had by all in the afternoon when the water parks opened and we all
jumped in fully clothed. It was a roasting hot day and Ruth who was melting
in the heat was the first one in! A great favourite for the children was
the water flumes and after a short time one of the boys came running over
and said ‘Auntie, Auntie can we come back here next week’. We finally
headed home with the customary stop for ice cream on the way. 
with their course work as
be used as the roof was not water tight. We have replaced the roof and
will add an inner false ceiling to keep the area cool in the summer months.
The main hall on the upper floor has been reconstructed to include four
sizeable bedrooms for the older girls and one large bedroom for the younger
girls. This will allow the older girls some privacy and the opportunity
for private study. The girls will also have two toilets and washing
facilities on this floor. The roof of the former hall has been extended
outwards and a large canopy erected where washing can be dried and the
homework classes held during the rainy season. A canopy will also be added
to the outer stairways which access the upper floors. The outside of the
Centre has been given a facelift by painting it a lovely bright blue and
yellow. The girls have been excitedly watching the transformation of the
hall into bedrooms and they have already booked their rooms! With these
changes upstairs, areas on the ground floor have been released and washrooms
upgraded for the use of the boys. Now I will be campaigning for funds to
complete these changes by providing beds for the new bedrooms. I am
extremely grateful to Joseph our ‘Little Drops Charity Trust’ Representative
for his help and assistance in co-ordinating the work.
With a number of the
children coming to the end of their school years, I discussed their futures
with Sister Jayaseelu and agreed to give support with further training. We
are at present supporting Sailaja for a BCA computer course and also funding
the training fees for Jayamarie for a two year teachers training course.
This year it was end of school time for Selva Lakshmi and Venitha who has
been brought up in the St. Joseph Centre since she was a small baby. We
have agreed to support Selva Lakshmi for her nursing training and college
accommodation for three years. Venitha who will continue to live at the
St. Joseph Centre while she takes a two year course in Computer Science at a
college nearby will be supported for her college fees. During my visit I
was also delighted to meet up again with Pradeep who was previously brought
up in the St. Joseph Centre. Pradeep, who I first met as a twelve year
old, has now found employment and gone back to live with his mother. It has
been lovely to see these boys and girls grow up over the years I have been
visiting and now finally see them embarking on their chosen careers.
taken into care at the St. Joseph
Centre from various parts of southern India. These
children are either from broken homes or orphaned children who have no one
to call a family. With 10 new children it has meant not only extra
work for all the workers at the Centre but it has also put a strain on the
Centre’s financial budget. It costs around £175 to support a child for
a whole year (£15 monthly)—this covers their full Hostel Care needs, food,
medical care and an education at the local Tamil school. The 10
new children range in ages from 6-12 years old and all will be cared for in
the St. Joseph Centre until they complete their school years. If you
can help by supporting a child or know of anyone who can—please contact me
on the details above.