21 November 2008

WEST AFRICA: Do high food prices warrant a cash response?

DAKAR, 3 September 2008 (IRIN) - Experts say many of the right conditions are in place across West Africa to make cash distributions work in the current global food price crisis.

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Safety nets help to climate-proof the poor

A unique safety net programme being piloted in Ethiopia, which attempts to break away from the traditional humanitarian model, is being punted in the UN Development Programme's Human Development Report 2007/2008 as a "bold attempt" to tackle food security threats posed by an uncertain climate.

Copyright © IRIN 2008

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19 April 2008

Indian Institute of Data Interpretation and Analysis

Ladli-smykket laget av gatebarn i India.

Tekst: Camilla FlaattenFoto: Camilla Flaatten og promoDato: 05.10.2007
Ladli-smykket laget av gatebarn i India.
A&C-gründer Birgit Løitegaard. «Arts & Crafts»-gründer Birgit Løitegaard reiste på ferietur med datteren sin til India da de fikk tilbud om å besøke smykkebyen Jaipur. Der møtte Birgit Abha og hennes ektemann Prabhakar Goswami som startet prosjektet «i-india» og barnehjemmet Ladli med sikte på å hjelpe foreldreløse gatebarn i byen. - Det var en fantastisk opplevelse å møte disse to menneskene som siden 1993 har viet sitt liv til å hjelpe barna i slummen. De har tatt barna inn, gitt de et sted å sove, mat og skolegang. Jeg visste intuitivt at dette var noe jeg ville være med på, forteller Birgit til HENNE.no.
Hjelper mange
Ladli-smykkene er laget av halvedeslstener. De små posene er sydd av guttene og kjedene er laget av jentene. Inntektene fra kjedene går i sin helhet til barna å barnehjemmet. - Et solgt smykke betyr mat til femti gatebarn, og absolutt alle pengene går til å hjelpe barna. Jeg har selv merket hvor mye prosjektet engasjerer. Til min 50-års dag fikk jeg alle venner og familie til å gi pengegaver til Ladli, barn har hatt basar til inntekt for gatebarna der og barneskoler har engasjert seg med innsamlinger, sier Birgit. Ekteparet Goswami driver i dag barnehjemmet Ladli for 140 barn og de hjelper rundt 400 gatebarn daglig. Barna selv deltar i produksjonen og daglig lages det smykker ved barnehjemmet. Jentene lager smykkene og guttene syr de små posene kjedene kommer i. - Produksjonenekan hjelpe barna ut i arbeidslivet ved at de lærer seg håndverket og må ikke forveksles med barnearbeid, forteller Birgit.Ladli-smykket selges i norske «Arts & Crafts»-butikker over hele landet og koster fra 200 til 250 kroner for henholdsvis et kort og et langt smykke.

http://www.henne.no/php/art.php?id=491311

From street child to surgeon, Indian girl follows dream

FEATURE-From street child to surgeon, Indian girl follows dream
19 Feb 2007

By Jeremy Lovell

JAIPUR, India, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Former child prostitute Chand has a burning ambition -- to be a doctor helping India's destitute millions.
And the 16-year-old girl is bright enough to realise her dream, according to the charity that 10 years ago rescued her from the teeming streets of the northern Indian city of Jaipur with a population of some three million people.
"I want to be a surgeon. There are too many people and too few doctors here," the slim youngster told Reuters on a visit to the Ladli centre where she lives and learns in the sprawling metropolis dubbed the Pink City from the colour of its walls.
"That is my goal. In my society girls have very little chance to get an education. Here I have a chance," she added, seated under a tree in the dusty yard of the school.
Her story is as heart-rending as it is common. Only the end is different -- maybe.
Women, still considered by many as a commodity even in the 21st century, are neglected in the educational system and often sidelined in the social hierarchy.
According to UNICEF -- the United Nations' Childrens' Fund -- there are over two million prostitutes in India of whom some 500,000 are children or minors.
Some reports suggest that up to 200 women and children a day are forced into the world's oldest profession to pay debts or simply to provide an income for their families.
OUTREACH RESCUE
Chand's mother was a prostitute with 16 children living in Japiur's red light area, and the girl -- her family name has been withheld to protect her -- was already a child prostitute when she ran away to eke an existence on the streets aged six.
Ladli outreach workers found her and took her in to the sanctuary that it offers for abused, orphaned and destitute children in the Rajasthan state capital of 2.8 million people, 260 km (160 miles) southwest of Delhi.
"We try to give the children here their lives back," said founder Abha Goswami, 50. "We are giving love to our children. We are giving care to our children."
Goswami, whose mother died when she was just 18 months old and who was orphaned at 16, founded the I-India project in 1993 giving help to 500 of Jaipur's street children.
Three years later it set up the Child Inn boys home and the Ladli girls home and in 2000 it got its two School on Wheels buses touring the streets offering basic reading and writing lessons to children who would otherwise have no education.
Last year some 3,000 children passed through the hands of Goswami and her helpers -- either through the buses or the four homes and one vocational centre -- also called Ladli -- that I-India now operates.
GIVING LIFE TO CHILDREN
But resources are scarce. The organisation can not offer residential care to more than a handful of children, so the majority go back home or onto the streets every night.
"We have street children, runaways, orphans, children of prostitutes -- often child prostitutes themselves -- and abandoned children from divided families," Goswami said. "But we can't feed everyone in our homes."
Even for Chand, there is the constant threat of her past dragging her back to wreck her future.
"If I saw my family again they would want me back to become a prostitute again to earn money," she said simply.
It is an endless struggle with scant help from the government and the centre heavily reliant on its own fund raising and foreign sponsors of individual projects.
One such project is for the children to make and sell jewellery.
At the moment it is 50 percent funded by a sponsor, but the goal is to make it completely self-sufficient -- and for each piece that is sold some money is put into a bank account for the girls for when they grow up and leave.
The projects are a beacon of light in a country whose economy is booming but where some 35 million of the one billion population are orphans and where around 300 million people are living on less than $1 a day -- of whom 140 million are children.
"Our children are safe here. We feed them and teach them ... We give them skills and hope, so they can make their way and earn a living later in life," Goswami said.
"For just a few dollars a day we can give life back to a child here," she added.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/DEL174608.htm

28 March 2008

Childrens rights in India.

The Child Labour Act, bans the employment of children, below 14 years of age in specified occupations and processes which are considered unsafe and harmful to child workers and regulates the conditions of work of children in employment?s where they are not prohibited from working.

It also lays down penalties for employment of children in violation of the provisions of this Act, and other Acts which forbid the employment of children;
The Act extends to the whole of India. The Child Labour Act of 1986 applies to all establishments and workshops wherein any industrial process is carried on (excluding one covered under section 67 of the Factories Act, 1948).

An "establishment" includes a shop, commercial establishment, workshop, farm, residential hotel, and restaurant, eating house, theatre or other place of public amusement or entertainment.

It is a very weak law that is not even enforced.