World Centric: School Fees and Food for Impoverished Children in Bengaluru, India

World Centric + Jagruthi/Power of Love

$11,550.00 from profits from fiscal year 2017

In the impoverished communities of Doddigunta and Cox Town, in Bengaluru, India, most residents are unskilled workers; a majority are unemployed, live in extreme poverty, and leave their children unattended. These children are exposed to sexual exploitation, abuse, disease, drug addictions and suffer from physical and mental trauma. The children are malnourished and have no access to proper care and education in a safe environment.

Since 1996, Jagruthi's Home Care Center has provided residential care to children ranging in age from newborn to 20. Most of these children have been either sexually exploited or involved in sex work in the past, while some have been orphaned due to AIDS. The programs at Jagruthi strive to protect and nurture these children, leading them towards a better and brighter future.

The Impact

Access to education for 110 children:

Provision of three nutritious meals, fees for attendance in pre-school, and teaching and learning materials to 50 children aged 3-6 years from the slum area of Doddigunta for 12 months.
Provision of school fees, school uniforms, books, school bags, and uniforms for 60 children (aged 6 and older) who are residents at Jagruthi’s Home Care Center for 12 months.

Indirect impacts:

Better mental and physical development for participating children.
Increase in community knowledge of better hygiene practices.
Increase in quality-of-life for participating children.

The Approach

Field staff identify new children arriving from different places to enter the sex trade by force or unknowingly. They also make door to door visit to identify children and young women in sex work. They have built a rapport with some of the brothels, pimps (Agents) and police departments so that they can contact children and young women who are forced into this labor. After identification, field staff prepare an Individual Intervention Plan for each person. If necessary a few of them will be sent to the residential Home Care Center and others will be given community based care and support, such as food and school fees.

About Jagruthi

A World Centric partner since 2018.

Jagruthi was created in 1995 to benefit of vulnerable women and children in the city of Bangalore. The organizations mission is to protect children and their rights through community education, motivation and intervention, neutralizing the influences that could deprive children of a safe childhood, upholding their right to dignity and self-esteem and ensuring that they will not be subjected to any form of discrimination and be safeguarded from all forms of exploitation.