Wednesday, 7 February 2018
Saturday, 3 February 2018
Tuesday, 30 January 2018
Story of cleft children- Ibrahim and Mehrin
KNOW HOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR SURGERY COUNTS!
AND HOW A SIMPLE SURGERY HANGED IBRAHIM AND MEHRIN'S LIFE
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Deutsche Cleft ABMSS started a weeklong search and awareness camp in Hyderabad on the eve of World Smile Day last year. Among others, we found two cleft children (Ibrahim and Mehrin) who hail from poor family and they were not in a position to afford the cost of their surgery. During the camp, we could learn about their families and how they have to face difficulty even to bring them to hospital for medical check-up.
Their stories are testimony to how cleft is understood in many communities in our country and why we need extensive search and awareness camps to identify them and convince them for a free cleft surgery. Because for them, impact will begin to show later but agreeing them for a surgery is one of the tedious task to do.
We appealed to our generous donors to support the two needy children who could not wait as they needed a dignified life and especially Ibrahim was very fond of going to school. Your donation did not go in vain; rather impacted to their lives highly.
MOHAMMED IBRAHIM (5 YEARS)
Mohammed Ibrahim hails from a very poor Muslim family who live in Hasan Nagar, a slum in the south Hyderabad. Ibrahim has one brother and a sister younger to him. There the little boy lives with his family in the simplest circumstances. He is already five years old and has not undergone surgery because his parents could not afford the surgery.
Ibrahim is a boy with curiosity. He is interested to know so many things, manages to make friends even if some of them don’t treat him well because of the deformity. His father Muzeeb (42) hardly takes care of their family and its Riswara 32 (Ibrahim’s mother) takes care of her kids.
Ibrahim’s father does not support much to his family since he does not go to work every day. For that, Ibrahim’s grand parents came to front and have always been supporting her. But Roswara works in other’s house to feed their kids.
They needed our help since they can’t otherwise afford to do the operation of the children though they knew that Ibrahim’s operation can be possible and there are some organizations that can help them. But they did not have any information about any organization before our project animator reached out there.
Ibrahim is a positive child. He tries to do everything even if he has to face difficulty while eating, speaking and playing with other school children. He also wants to read because his family members identified one day he was very interested to go to school.
MEHRIN (4 YEARS)
The little girl lives with her parents and four siblings in a poor shelter in a slum in the west of Hyderabad. Mehrin has 2 brothers and two sisters. And she is the third child in the family.
Mehrin’s father Sheikh Moiz (40 years) takes alcohol all the time and does not take responsibility for his family. Even though he works as a carpenter, but most of his income goes in taking alcohol. For that reason, Parveen (31) , Mehrin’s mother had to work as a labourer in a plastic company . With her little income that is the source to feed her family members , she could not think of sending her kids to school. Not a single child of her is enrolled in school.
When Mehrin was born, the neighbours and community members started seeing the child differently. Parveen was worried to see all this was happening with her and she was thinking how Mehrin’s face can be normal like others.
When we told the mother of the free treatment option, they could hardly believe their luck - finally their daughter should get a "new face"! However, it was difficult to take a decision because she could hardly take any decision for her kid as their family was a male dominated ones where females are only allowed to do household stuff and earn for the family. However, Parveen fought with her family for Mehrin’s treatment as she was really worried about her daughter’s future. Mehrin’s life can see a drastic change the way people are looking at her deformity, with multiple surgeries.
The surgery date was postponed by a few days: For Ibrahim, it was finally on October 8, and two days later was also Mehrin from our surgeon dr. Vijay Kumar operates in Hyderabad. As expected, both interventions went very well and without complications. See the result of the surgery and thank-you messages from Ibrahim's grandfather and Mehrin's mother. Since the two children have just been operated on, the mouth is still slightly swollen. But soon, only a fine scar will remember her disfigurement.
Monday, 29 January 2018
Right to Education
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act or Right to Education Act (RTE), is an Act of the Parliament of India enacted on 4 August 2009, which describes the modalities of the importance of free and compulsory education for children between 6 and 14 in India under Article 21a of the Indian Constitution. India became one of 135 countries to make education a fundamental right of every child when the Act came into force on 1 April 2010.
The Act makes education a fundamental right of every child between the ages of 6 and 14 and specifies minimum norms in elementary schools. It requires all private schools to reserve 25% of seats to children (to be reimbursed by the state as part of the public-private partnership plan). Kids are admitted in to private schools based on economic status or caste based reservations. It also prohibits all unrecognised schools from practice, and makes provisions for no donation or capitation fees and no interview of the child or parent for admission. The Act also provides that no child shall be held back, expelled, or required to pass a board examination until the completion of elementary education. There is also a provision for special training of school drop-outs to bring them up to par with students of the same age.
The RTE Act requires surveys that will monitor all neighbourhoods, identify children requiring education, and set up facilities for providing it. The World Bank education specialist for India, Sam Carlson, has observed: "The RTE Act is the first legislation in the world that puts the responsibility of ensuring enrolment, attendance and completion on the Government. It is the parents' responsibility to send the children to schools in the US and other countries."
The Right to Education of persons with disabilities until 18 years of age is laid down under a separate legislation - the Persons with Disabilities Act. A number of other provisions regarding improvement of school infrastructure, teacher-student ratio and faculty are made in the Act.
Education in the Indian constitution is a concurrent issue and both centre and states can legislate on the issue. The Act lays down specific responsibilities for the centre, state and local bodies for its implementation. The states have been clamouring that they lack financial capacity to deliver education of appropriate standard in all the schools needed for universal education. Thus it was clear that the central government (which collects most of the revenue) will be required to subsidise the states.
A committee set up to study the funds requirement and funding initially estimated that INR 1710 billion or 1.71 trillion (US$38.2 billion) across five years was required to implement the Act, and in April 2010 the central government agreed to sharing the funding for implementing the law in the ratio of 65 to 35 between the centre and the states, and a ratio of 90 to 10 for the north-eastern states. However, in mid 2010, this figure was upgraded to INR 2310 billion, and the center agreed to raise its share to 68%. There is some confusion on this, with other media reports stating that the centre's share of the implementation expenses would now be 70%. At that rate, most states may not need to increase their education budgets substantially.
A critical development in 2011 has been the decision taken in principle to extend the right to education till Class X (age 16) and into the preschool age range. The CABE committee is in the process of looking into the implications of making these changes.
The Ministry of HRD set up a high-level, 14-member National Advisory Council (NAC) for implementation of the Act. The members included Kiran Karnik, former president of NASSCOM; Krishna Kumar, former director of the NCERT; Mrinal Miri, former vice-chancellor of North-East Hill University; Yogendra Yadav – social scientist. India
Sajit Krishnan Kutty, Secretary of The Educators Assisting Children's Hopes (TEACH) India; Annie Namala, an activist and head of Centre for Social Equity and Inclusion; and Aboobacker Ahmad, vice-president of Muslim Education Society, Kerala.
A report on the status of implementation of the Act was released by the Ministry of Human Resource Development on the one year anniversary of the Act. The report admits that 8.1 million children in the age group six-14 remain out of school and there’s a shortage of 508,000 teachers country-wide. A shadow report by the RTE Forum representing the leading education networks in the country, however, challenging the findings pointing out that several key legal commitments are falling behind the schedule. The Supreme Court of India has also intervened to demand implementation of the Act in the Northeast. It has also provided the legal basis for ensuring pay parity between teachers in government and government aided schools. Haryana Government has assigned the duties and responsibilities to Block Elementary Education Officers–cum–Block Resource Coordinators (BEEOs-cum-BRCs) for effective implementation and continuous monitoring of implementation of Right to Education Act in the State.
It has been pointed out that the RTE act is not new. Universal adult franchise in the act was opposed since most of the population was illiterate. Article 45 in the Constitution of India was set up as an act: The State shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years.
As that deadline was about to be passed many decades ago, the education minister at the time, MC Chagla, memorably said: "Our Constitution fathers did not intend that we just set up hovels, put students there, give untrained teachers, give them bad textbooks, no playgrounds, and say, we have complied with Article 45 and primary education is expanding... They meant that real education should be given to our children between the ages of 6 and 14" - (MC Chagla, 1964).
In the 1990s, the World Bank funded a number of measures to set up schools within easy reach of rural ommunities. This effort was consolidated in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan model in the 1990s. RTE takes the process further, and makes the enrolment of children in schools a state prerogative.
Tuesday, 23 January 2018
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