Individual & Collective Sponsorships
For the
Rural and Semi-urban children
As of Today, UNICEF estimates that India has
the highest number of child labourers in the world, a total of 12 million, with
many of this 12 million still living under the international poverty
line. Though several factors continually contribute to this
staggering number, the overall leading cause is a lack of educational opportunities
provided for children.
Deshna Foundation is aware that many children are forced to drop out of school. The Reasons are diverse, some are compelled to take care of younger siblings,
others to take up menial work for meagre salaries
or to beg to support their families, or simply because
their unstable home lives are not conducive
to the institutionalized system of education. Children
who do attend school are often left alone in the afternoons after school while their parents are still out working.
With no supervision and without proper homes, these children are left at a high risk of
physical and sexual abuse and can often descend into antisocial behaviour.
These children are stigmatized
by the local community, which
treats them without
care or respect.
We address
the critical educational needs of socio-economically disadvantaged children and
communities in urban Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu and its surrounding villages.
Deshna’s one of the important mission is to provide protection and assistance to vulnerable children
of Pondicherry. We provide access to education, recreational activities and emotional support.
Through Sponsor programs, Deshna
Foundation a seeks to connect individual donors with children needing support
to return to their education and communities with specific development needs.
There are two levels of sponsorship:
support of individual children, and support of communities and/or select groups
of children.
Individual Sponsorship Program
The Individual Sponsorship
Program, is one of Deshna Foundation’s
first programs. It is the central method that Deshna uses to connect individual
children with sources of funding for their education. The organization receives
requests for educational support from the families in Pondicherry and Tamil
Nadu and also identifies children who should be at school through its outreach
activities. Then the organisation determines children who need the support the
most according to a set of criteria and matches them with sponsors who provide
material resources that are necessary for children to complete their education.
Most of the identified children are
typically come from communities with very low socio-economic status and
families with poor living conditions, struggling to meet their basic daily needs.
The social workers undertake complete evaluations of each case, making visits
to family homes to ascertain the nature and extent of the difficulties
involved, and to motivate both parents/caregivers and children to do what it
takes to resume formal education in such a way as to ensure their chances of
success.
On being sponsored, As with
individually sponsored children will receive
- Yearly tuition.
- School Supplies: textbooks, notebooks, pencils, school uniform yearly, school bag, geometry sets, and other supplies as mandated.
- Optional English Course;
- Optional Evening Classes;
Each sponsor becomes a Child’s Mentor too, and
the social workers then ensure the children and the sponsors are connected to each other
by writing letters, the communication with the Sponsors will be at specified, regular intervals.
Individual sponsorship requires a
commitment of INR 1000 per month, i.e.INR 12000 per year, for a minimum of one
year. Ideally, Deshna Foundation hopes this commitment will continue until the
child is able to complete his/her education. Based on this contribution, we
have set a ceiling amount of Rs.9000 to support each child to maintain equal
treatment across all its beneficiaries.
Collective Sponsorship
The collective sponsorship model pool-funding from multiple donors in order to sponsor the educations of groups of
children. Deshna Foundation identifies communities or villages where a majority
of the children are not at school and families need the organization’s support
to educate their children. Children in these villages receive benefits similar
to the benefits that individually sponsored children receive – school fees,
school supplies, one meal a day, medical attention, etc.
Donors may give according to their
means and Deshna Foundation uses the funds to reach out to as many children as
possible. All children in the villages are eligible to receive collective
sponsor benefits.
Funds collected towards collective
sponsorship are also used to assist “Social Special cases”. Children who have
experienced an emergency or sudden alteration of their familial circumstances,
such as the death or abandonment of parents, lack of physical security, a fire
accident in which family members are hurt or the home is destroyed, or other exigent
circumstances. In such instances, Deshna Foundation investigates the case,
prioritizes the child’s needs and works out a plan of rehabilitation according
to capacity.