Celebrating of Christmas at Sudakshya

 

We strongly believe that it is extremely important that young children have the opportunity to have imagination skills. One of the reasons we strongly promote this is because the way to develop imagination and creative thinking is through great Christmas stories for children.

Christmas is the perfect Occasion to tell the story of Jesus’ birth. This is the story a young woman named marry lives in a town called Nazareth and is engaged to a man named Joseph. One night, God sent an angel named Gabriel to visit Mary. The angel told marry God is very pleased with you and you will soon become pregnant and have a baby boy. Name him Jesus because he will be God’s own son.

The birth of Jesus Christ was the incarnation of God himself. In other words, the very God became a man. The significance of this is profound and will take all eternity for us to appreciate. The conception and the birth of Jesus was the mingling of God with humanity. The festival Christmas is celebrated to remember the birth of Jesus Christ. The Christ-mass service is one service that is allowed to take place after sunset. Hence, Christ-Mass became Christmas as a shorter version.

Lately sudakshya has celebrated the festive of Christmas. Students from fours centers celebrated cheerfully. On this eve all students gathered with friends, teachers, and staffs of Niyatee Foundation, exchanged gifts, enjoyed wonderful food, and spend quality time together.

Students engaged in Christmas day celebrations by decorating the trees with small toys, dolls, paper ornaments, gold paper fans and lanterns and wind chimes. Miniature candles are also put among the decorated trees. Students partially dressed themselves in red and white clothing. They sang lovely carols and danced beautifully to wish their friends, teachers.

They were taught about the Christmas day story in order to explain the festival’s significance. The nativity play stole the hearts while combination of songs, Christmas dance and music were also performed.

Events were planned including the creation of Christmas cards, Christmas trees, Santa face masks and hand-crafted gifts. How delicious food with rich nut cakes can be forgotten, students enjoyed with having luscious food and cakes. This was done in educational way that encourages enjoyment while addressing important development areas. It was a uniqueness of sudakshya that teachers of this plan of action always use such occasion through activities to help students show their creativity, and students showed their activities and hone their fine motor skills.

 This eve teaches us we need to learn to live in this tension, to appreciate what we have and still hope for. This process is not easy, but it is part of being human and we connect us to each other.

CRECHE- Nurturing habits that at a tender age

 

Nurturing habits that at a tender age

A child is either asleep or is learning something. We often believe that learning is a conscious effort that happens only when we teach, but that isn’t the case with children; instead they learn the most when we aren’t teaching them at all. Their learning is mostly based on their observations and often they imitate us in speech or postures. It is therefore important for us to behave ourselves, rather than yelling at a child and asking them to behave. Parenting is, without a doubt, a challenging task as they have to set the standard for themselves for the child to observe and learn, but this is also an opportunity to inculcate good habits among children because any leaning from the tender age stays as a habit for the rest of their life.

At our Ama Kalika Kendra in Sundargarh, we believe in learning through observation, therefore we have trained our creche worker to create a learning environment at every creche for the children to learn. To do so, we ensure that all our creche workers are wearing clean clothes and maintain good hygiene themselves. It is also restricted for strangers to visit the creche for any purpose whatsoever and maintain a disciplined schedule for lunch, leisure and playing. Apart from that we also appreciate those children who wasted no food or are wearing clean clothes as a positive reinforcement for him/her and for others. Our creche worker also carries out activities like cleaning the premises or keeping books and toys on selves along with children for them to observe and learn. Our workers also maintain a constant  person to person communication on a daily basis, our creche worker greet each child and ask every child to do so among themselves, we also take children to nearby Anganwadi  under our supervision and make them  greet and interact with other children.  It is also observed that visual stimulation are the strongest of all, To ensure that, we play small videos and documentary for children to learn healthy practices like, washing their hands,  not wasting food and balance diet to leave a long lasting impression on each child. We believe that at a tender age, we can’t teach the children but instead, can create an environment where each child spontaneously learns.

Malnourishment is the Nation’s biggest Developmental issue

 

Malnourishment is the Nation’s biggest Developmental issue

A child, as soon he/she is conceived starts growing and requires proper nutrition. After birth, especially after he/she start consuming food for the first time, it is imperative that they receive appropriate amount of nutrients including a high protein and fat diet. Unfortunately in some families, due to extreme poverty and often negligence, children are not able to receive that balanced diet. A child can be well fed but not well nourished if the diet does not include protein and fats. Therefore we see stunted growth or ill developed cognitive functions in many children below the age of three. These irregularities will have an everlasting impact. The lack of proper nutrition may lead to improper physical or cognitive development and might eventually lead to his/her under performance growing up. Underperforming workforce will definitely have a big impact on our national GDP and development. Therefore nutrition/malnutrition isn’t just a personal issue but a national issue.

A proper diet of children is age specific and must contain high amount of protein, fats and mineral, which includes cereals and pulses with milk, oil/ghee and milk along with vegetables and iodized salt for minerals. The food being served must be, along with nutritious, must be sanitized and fresh. Fresh and warm food served in clean dishes is as important as serving food to start with. Often we see that children do not like to eat and show preferences over different food dishes and parents unfortunately adher by the child’s preferences than looking at their actual dietary requirement. It is the responsibility of the caregiver to prepare and cook the food in a way that is appropriate both for the dietary requirement of the child and his/her palate.  Our creches in Sundargarh ensure that each child consumes the above diet as prescribed by NHM and all food being prepared is in adherence to the guideline isuued by DMF and each child likes the taste of it. Therefore special cooking instruction is issued to our creche workers for that matter. Also special attention is given to children under SAM and MAM based on the prescription by NRC or medical officers from PHC. It is our aim to ensure that each child in our watch is well nourished, healthy and happy. 

Sudakshya Plus

 

Rediscovering our dreams!!

We help students fulfill their dreams through their hard work and guidance.

Unemployment is probably the biggest challenge our country is facing before becoming a developed nation or growing into a 5 trillion economy. We have a free and compulsory education programme for all children and we have leading universities in India but we still find millions of well educated and skilled unemployed youth struggling for a decent livelihood. The problem lied in our education system which fails to provide all necessary skillets required to be able to compete and excel in any service or tertiary sector. Students from upper middle class get access to world class coaching centers to fill this gap in our education system but students from the vulnerable sections of the society have to struggle even to complete their basic education. 

The “Sudakshya plus” project by Niyatee Foundation, funded by DMF Sundargarh is an initiative to bring together students from this vulnerable section of society and give them world class coaching and study materials, free of cost. This is launched in Sundargarh district and is aimed towards helping the students to prepare for various competitive exams including, banking, Staff selection etc. This project aims to provide free coaching to aspiring students of pre graduates background. For this purpose we have enrolled students from 6 colleges in Sundargarh. As a part of the package we impart professional skills like aptitude and reasoning along with necessary computer skills and spoken English. We conduct weekly tests and mock interviews so the students can practice and have more success at various competitive exams. In addition, textbooks and previous question papers will be provided for preparation of various exams. We also provide library facilities and conduct exposure tour to job camps. This programme is one of its kinds to help students get all opportunities for every aspiration they have.

SUDAKSHYA

 

To every aspiration there should be an opportunity!

Every child grows up seeing his father going for work. As he grows up he/she understands what he/she needs to do for his/her self and family. These young minds idolize their role model and aspire to become one of them.  This is a story of all those who grow up, but not all who grow up have the access to all opportunity and support they deserve. Students from the mining affected areas of the society have to struggle even to complete their basic education. Very few of them make it to their dream job or even a job for that matter.  Unemployment is as rampant in India as vacancies in government sectors and there are students especially from the vulnerable section of society who aspire to take up these jobs but do not get proper coaching and opportunity to study.

The “Sudakshya” project by Niyatee Foundation, funded by Sundargarh DMF is an initiative to bring together students from this vulnerable section of society and give them world class coaching and study materials, free of cost. The programme is aimed towards helping the students to prepare for various competitive exams including, banking, Staff selection etc. We impart professional skills like aptitude and reasoning along with necessary computer skills and spoken English. We conduct weekly tests and mock interviews so the students can practice and have more success at various competitive exams. In addition, textbooks and previous question papers will be provided for preparation of various exams.We conduct regular mock test and mock interviews to build confidence of our candidates. We also ensure that all students get a friendly environment, study rooms, library and residential facilities along with food. We also conduct exposure tour to job camps and screen motivational movies to motivate students to keep their zeal active. Our programme is one of its kinds to help students get all opportunities for every aspiration they have. 

Empowering people through power sector

 

Electricity has become one of our basic needs and it is almost difficult to imagine life without electricity. It has not just an essential need of a household but it is essential for various business enterprises, agriculture and almost all livelihood sectors. Therefore it would not be reasonable to call electricity, a luxury product. The power industry consists of 3 phases, production, Transmission and Distribution. In the distribution phase electricity is distributed to consumers under various schemes and connection types. These consumers then pay their bill based on the reading on their meter and based on their connection type and scheme. Usually these three phases in power sector have different players or agencies. In western Odisha, the distribution was managed by WESCO but it was handed over to Tata Power and Tata Power Western Odisha Distribution Limited (TPWODL) was established. The biggest challenge in distribution sector is to take accurate reading and collect dues in time without incurring losses. For the consumers this often leads to unjustified bills much higher than their actual consumption. Sometimes they do not even get a bill at all.

Niyatee Foundation in collaboration with TPWODL chalked out a new strategy to carry out the billing and collection activities. Instead of employing personal randomly, we organize selection camp within each community and select youths and SHG member for the task. After providing them with necessary training and all equipment, they are deployed in their own local community for meter reading and fee collection. To ensure easy access for consumers, we have 2 teams, a team goes door to door and a counter agent who receives via cash or online mode. To ensure that no consumer faces any issue related to their bills, we also select and deploy another special team to carry out a survey in each household and based on their report necessary intervention is initiated by TPWODL, including a bill revision camp. These locally recruited agents receive commission on each assignment they perform, e.g. Meter reading, collection or survey and can earn up to 12,000 a month. Through this model, we are able to convert the power sector from just a service delivery enterprise to an employment generator.

Jal Jivan Mission - Niyatee Foundation

 

Decentralized Governance; Water management through VWSC

 

Democracy as famously quoted, is a form of government from the people, by the people and for the people. To ensure that the fruit of democracy reaches out to the last person residing in the remotest village, one must decentralize the governance from the capital to the village meeting place.  The 73^rd amendment created a three tier Panchayati raj with Gram Sabha being the general body in each village which has the authority to pass resolution and approve all decisions. To understand, decentralization, we must first understand division of Power. In the ancient and medieval ages, the monarch was a centre of power with ultimate authority and sovereignty. India became independent in 1947 and was declared as a “Union of states” , which means that unlike a authoritarian unitary state, The power was divided between the union government and the state government.  The 73^rd amendment constitutionalised the urban and local bodies and hence, now we have 3 tiers of power/governance, with local bodies being the last tier.

Each tier of government has its own sphere of influence and jurisdiction and implements its own developmental schemes and projects. However the implementation part is usually carried out by the bureaucrats or civil servants. Therefore the implementation and management of all development projects and schemes are often fall pay to “Red Tapism”. Common public also almost no say in the implementation process. To ensure that people have a say and contribution in each step of the implementation process, India has introduced various mechanisms, Social Audit of MGNREGA, Pani Panchayat, JFM are few examples of such mechanism.

The Jal Jivan mission by the union government envisages that each and every household has supply of clean drinking water and a tap connection by 2024. To ensure that it is implemented with the participation of the community, the government establishes Village Water Sanitation Committees (VWSCs) in all villages to prepare a village action plan to be implemented and day to day maintenance of water infrastructure within the village with village funds collected through individual contribution and government funds. Niyatee Foundation is entrusted with this responsibility to constitute VWSC in each village in Sambalpur, Bargarh, Deogarh, Sundargarh and Jharsuguda district. So far we have formed 5112 VWSCs and entrusted these VWSC with the task of overseeing and management of resources and infrastructure required to achieve water supply to all household by 2024. 

 

Consultative workshop on Mother’s to Child Transmission of STDs

 

“We envisage a world where no Child suffer and dies from STDs and No child is left orphan because of it either”

Since the ancient days it is known that some diseases are communicable and triggers mass epidemics. Epidemic gives rises of myths and discrimination that only makes things worse for the people suffering. These people are often left to die untouched and unattended. Although it is advisable to maintain precaution but right precaution is necessary to ensure wellbeing of not only the person suffering but also of the community. There are various ways a communicable disease can spread, whether it is by a vector like mosquitoes and mice or often it is through aerial means or through contact surfaces. There are, however, certain diseases that spread only via sexual contact. Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) spread across only via sexual contact and not via physical contact or aerial means.  AIDS and Syphilis are the major STDs prevalent in India. However, like any other communicable disease, they are shrouded with myths and misconception. Medically, one can become HIV positive but might not show any symptoms but is subjected to social discrimination, but despite these discriminations, it is spreading across the community like wildfire. These being sexually transmitted affect the entire family and can pass on to the child, since it can spread from womb and/or during lactation.

Mere social distancing and discrimination, as discussed earlier, will fail to check the spread but will only make the matter worse for the person with HIV as he/she will be subjected to discrimination leading to depression. It is imperative that general public must be made aware of how it transmits and what precautionary method should one take to keep him/her healthy and avoid stigmatization of person suffering from it.  Unprotected sexual intercourse or usage of used syringe and barber’s blade are the things public needs to avoid at any cost. Social and physical contact will not lead to transmission.

Apart from person to person contact, there is a high probability for mother to child transmission as well. This can be prevented if the mother takes necessary precautions and steps, steps includes, mandatory HIV testing, and regular intake of ART. The objective behind this workshop is to sensitive all medical professional, gynecologists or not on preventive measures to save a child from mother to child infection.  Every doctor or medical professional must advise the mother to take precautionary measures whenever they came across a pregnant mother, whether or not she is tested positive, since HIV might have a prolonged window period without any symptoms. It is therefore responsibility of every single doctor or medical professional including a nurse or a compounder to advice every mother on undertaking necessary steps starting with a mandatory HIV test. It is thus the intension behind this joint initiative with UNICEF and Niyatee Foundation to ensure that no child suffers from STD and no child is left orphan because of it.

Shelter for Urban Homeless under Kendrapara Municipality

 

A Home for the Homeless

One of the basic need of every human being is a shelter to live in. even after 76 years of our independence, we are yet to provide home/shelter to all our citizens. In every city you will come across herd of people, mostly migrants or destitute residing on footpaths or on vacant government land in their tents. In the night, we often find these people sleeping on footpaths, bus stops and railway stations. Who are these people and where do they come from? They are mostly migrants from far off villages who come to city for livelihood options. Some of them are destitute; some of them are probably lost or are old people ousted from their family. They can be anyone.

During the recent pandemic, we saw authorities imposing strict lockdown but where shall these people lock themselves down? There are short stay shelters for these people which focus on providing temporary staying arrangement for them. The Shelter for Homeless (SUH) project by Niyatee Foundation in collaboration with Municipal Council, Kendrapada focuses not just in providing shelter for homeless but to rehabilitate them as well. Our team of rescuers rescues this homeless person and provides them with a decent living space and our caregivers ensure that they are treated well and are attended if they suffer from any medical issues. We also have a team of counselors who counsel these people to understand their situation and provide immediate solution; we trace their families or provide them access to livelihood options and link them with all possible governmental assistance through various schemes. We also ensure that these people as long as they stay here are able to mingle with each other and are engaged in joint exercise and activities to ensure that nobody feels left out or in stress. Our objective with this initiative is to ensure that no person is left homeless and nobody will go homeless in future after our intervention. 

AMA KALIKA KENDRA-NIYATEE FOUNDATION

 

Why do we need “Early Stimulation Activities”

 

              It is always joyful watch children playing with their toys or learning how to walk. Every child begins their life by exploring their sensual stimulations. They observe everything around them with curiosity. For parents, this curiosity is often heart warming but sometimes a concern too, as their exploration might put them in danger. In the first 1000 days of a child, he/she experiences maximum neural activities and they form new neural synapses at an accelerated pace. In lay man terms, this is when he/she learns at an accelerated rate.

              Every child learns their basic motion and skills during this age. He/She learns how to walk, hold things, facial expressions, posture and framing words and sentences. As he ages, His/Her neural synapses formation slows down and is unable to learn these skills effectively for the rest of the life. In our creches, we understand this fact and try to engage each child in activities, designed specifically to enhance their social, motor and executive functions. There is one thing about learning that equally applies to adults too, that is, we subconsciously resist any attempt to learn if the environment is monotonous or intimidating. Therefore in our creches, we do not teach or train our kids, but we make them play, participate in competitive events and organize excursion trip, as a way to learn with fun.

              We begin with short activities like walking the path or catching the balls and then take it to the next notch by challenges like treasure hunt and trace the path. We also make them sing and dance on action songs to imprint images/visuals that they shall memories and remember, such as name of objects, animals and their characteristics. We also take the children to nearby Anganwadi to interact with other children and sometimes to the local shop to purchase a candy. These outing and interaction enables them to develop their social and executive skills.

             The most important aspect of Early Stimulation exercise is perhaps is their ability to talk. Talking is the only ability that set us aside from other mammals. We encourage our creche workers to communicate with each and every child in the creche. Telling them a story, fantasies or singing them a song will certainly help these children to grasp words and learn to form their own sentences. Our ultimate goal behind running these creches has always been and shall always be to nurture, care and ensure that no baby is left out before it’s too late to intervene.