| Dear Friends |
September 2007
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| Sujitha is a baby girl, 50 days of age, who has been abandoned into our care and is now safe with a new “mother” and 6 older “brothers” and “sisters”. She is extraordinarily beautiful and looks and is very healthy. A wonderful gift from God, because we know that every child that comes into our care is a sign that God trusts us to take good care of those He brings to us. However, her story is very sad, but also representative of the kind of children that come to us. This year alone we have admitted more than 100 such children. At times their individual stories are heart-rending. |
| Sujitha, who is a Brahmin, the highest caste, was born in Tanjore, a town very far from RTU. A childless couple in Madurai wanted to adopt a baby girl and accepted this baby though not through a recognized adoption agency or a child-welfare organization. Shortly after reaching home the baby started to show signs of the HIV virus and on checking with a series of tests it was confirmed that she did indeed have the virus. |
| The adopting parents were overwhelmed with dismay and grief and decided that they could not care for such a child despite being already so attached. From Madurai HIV/AIDS Government Centre they were advised to bring her to us. We are now a referral centre for such cases and we are very happy to welcome such children. We will start whatever treatment is possible and we know that she will be able to live a normal life, like all the others in our care. Many of our “mothers”, (we have 90 in our four Children’s Villages) love to have the feel of a baby in their arms and we have no problem placing a tiny child in one of our many families. |
| At the other end of our caring for HIV affected children is an older girl. Arul Priya, an AIDS orphan who has inherited this disease from her parents, suddenly fell ill one morning. She is about 15 years old which is a critical time for this disease. We are not sure what caused this collapse, but the virus could have gone to the brain or it could be the side effect of one of the anti retroviral drugs, despite careful supervision by our doctors and nurses. It seemed like a stroke with paralysis down the left side of her body. She is a brilliant student and an excellent athlete which makes it apparently all the more tragic. After initial intensive care in the big Government hospital in Madurai, she is now in Jeevan Jyothi Hospice which we helped to build and work very closely with for our HIV children who need extra special care. She is improving well, she is a determined girl who is so desirous of continuing her studies that she has asked for her school books. With her strong will, her youth and the excellent care in the hospice we feel sure that she will become her old self once again. |
| Recently I went to three remote villages where we are building houses. This is a perennial part of our outreach to the poorest of people around us. We have built more than 7500 houses over the years and it is so rewarding to see families move into good permanent little houses from miserable flimsy huts. These are always for families who could hardly get any poorer. |
| In these three villages the wretched living conditions were as bad as could be. The children were so neglected: dirty, in the worse of clothes, some in none at all, Two men were confined to their huts, one with a broken leg and another with an amputation up to his thigh. One family had seven children and the mother was evidently pregnant, all trying to live in a tiny, one-roomed hut. I wondered how they managed to cram into that hut at night. And all these poor little huts were on top of each other in a very congested area. One has also to remember that there are absolutely no toilet facilities apart from the sides of nearby lanes. Water supplies will be from a single distant handpump that has to cater for all the houses for washing, bathing, cooking, drinking. Life can be extremely harsh. Villages in India are mostly untouched by the boasted development in some of the bigger towns. The further from main roads the worse the neglect. |
| Despite reports of severe flooding along the west coast of India and across the north, in the whole of this area available domestic water supplies are so bad that the villages are getting water only once every fifteen days for about an hour. Rivers are totally dry and dead, so are the reservoirs called tanks. We put in a 4 km large pipeline for our local village of Kallupatti which cost Rs.900,000 (£11,000) but even this is dry at present since it depends on the river which is dry. Even our own water supply developed over several years is now precariously low and this feeds into our Children’s Villages, schools, main centre, etc. We can only hope to hold on until November when our monsoon should arrive. How do people manage for cooking, washing, bathing, drinking? |
| For the rest of this Newsletter I have asked one of our Assistant Directors, Mr James, to introduce you to our community development work... |
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| MY NAME IS Amal Susairaj James. I am 45 years old and came under the care of Brother James Kimpton in 1974. I came to a Boys’ Village because my parents were too poor to pay for my secondary education. After completing Grade 10 at G. Kallupatti I came to RTU and studied for a Diploma in Community Health. Then I went to USA to attend a Health Management Course in Atlanta before returning to RTU to serve as Manager of the Community Health department here. I have been working in RTU for 25 years and in January 2007 was promoted to Assistant Director in the Development wing. |
| Our core objectives are:
1. To contribute to the integrated development of the poor through health awareness and general life-skills.
2. To empower people to organize themselves and to work towards the achievement of a self-reliant community.
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| The Community Health department currently targets 24 villages as outreach areas to promote our health and development programmes. These include: general health, HIV/AIDS control, savings and credit associations, low-cost housing and safe drinking water. Counselling sessions, group discussion, audio-visual aids, exhibitions and posters are all used to spread health awareness among people in the villages. 24 part-time village health workers are working in their respective villages, visiting families, providing basic medicines, weighing the children each month and distributing Sathumavu (nutritious flour) for underweight children. Serious medical cases are referred to hospitals. |
| HIV/AIDS CARE AND SUPPORT PROGRAMME.
RTU has been involved in HIV/AIDS care & support programmes for children and adult since 2000. The main aim is to control HIV/AIDS in our target areas through health education activities like street theatre, film shows and building understanding and capability of the rural people.
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| 26 children from 19 HIV/AIDS families have been admitted to our Children’s Villages due to inability of their parents to take care of their children. As well, 57 families are getting monthly monetary assistance based on the number of family members. We make cash payments of approximately Rs.49,000 to the beneficiaries in each month (an average of about £10 per family). The families are very happy with this support because they can eat sufficient food every day. Regular medical services are provided through the RTU medical department and the Government Hospital. 36 patients are taking ART (anti retroviral therapy) drugs from Government Medical College Hospitals. |
| Review meetings are also conducted every month at RTU. In these groups they share their joys and sorrows, guidance is given about life expectancy; and staff teach Yoga, social games, hygiene and nutrition. |
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HOME SPONSORSHIP PROGRAMME. The most outstanding feature of the Community Health Department is the Home Sponsorship Programme. Its main goal is to prevent the incidence of dropout among school-going children and to improve their living conditions. Not only the individual families and children benefit, there is also a good increase in the community sustainability as a whole.
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Every month each family gets Rs.250 (about £3) per child as a Home Sponsorship. 196 families are currently benefiting and as a result, 516 children attend school regularly and are showing more interest in their studies the children are getting sufficient food and improved general health; they are cleaner and appear neat in their school uniforms. This has improved their hygiene and physical appearance.
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SCHOOL HEALTH PROGRAMME.
Fifteen staff have been trained in talking to students about sex and sexuality and HIV/AIDS. Local headmasters have been trained to understand the importance of these programmes and 20 teachers were chosen to be trained as “Friendly Advisors” to whom students with doubts or problems could go for advice and help.
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Susairaj James
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| Cordially yours, |
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| Brother James
Kimpton |
