July 25th

Dear all,

Fundraising for the ongoing project has been going on through this month. We are still short of 26K, of the total 33K.

Donations so far include:

1. Dr Pavithra Kalyan & Mr Kalyan - Rs.1000/-

2. Dr Radha Annamalai & Mr Mahesh - Rs.3000/-

3. Renita -Rs1,500/-

4. Karthik -Rs1,500/-

TOTAL -Rs 7,000/-

As of now, Feroz is still working on the remainder required amount, and if faced with further delay, we hope to get money on loan and start the project at the earliest, the loan will be paid off once more donations start coming in.

Please do contribute in whatever way possible, either in terms of your time, commitment and/ or money, and together lets get this project up and running as soon as we can.

Meanwhile....

Praveen Selvam, Allen, Rajesh and Sriram are working on the website(HUGS India - main page) as well as the ancillary website database of 'found' children. As a start, the HUGS logo is being reworked, and we will have a final version soon.

Report - Eye camp

HUGS India : OPHTHALMOLOGY CAMP CONDUCTED ON 6^th JUNE 2010, ROYAPURAM BOYS HOME

The camp addressed a total of 126 children, those having problems/ needing a future course of action are listed herebelow.

Sl. No	Name	Opinion/ Problem/ Plan of action
1	S. Babu	Evaluation of squint
2	Metper	Refraction
3	Palpandi	Refraction
4	Raja	Dilation &Refraction
5	Aravind	Dilation &Refraction
6	Ashok	Dilation &Refraction
7	Alagumuthu	Refraction/ ENT check (urgent)
8	Karthikeyan	Dermatologist opinion
9	Surya	Epiphora for evaluation
10	Ajay	Dilation &Refraction/ Derm opinion
11	Ramkumar	Dilation &Refraction
12	Vijay	Dilation &Refraction
13	Mohan	ENT opinion
14	Sakkarai Raja	Dilation &Refraction
15	Vignesh	Dilation &Refraction(Urgent)
16	Ashokan	Dilation &Refraction
17	Subramani	Dilation &Refraction
18	Vasantha Kumar	Dilation &Refraction
19	Sathish	Detailed fundus examination
20	Naiya	Fundus evaluation
21	Karuppusamy	Refraction
22	Tamudas	Psychiatry evaluation
23	Joseph	Requires further evaluation for left eye squint before starting glasses
24	Vishwabharath	Dilation &Refraction
25	Yuvaraj	Dilation &Refraction
26	S Peter	Dilation &Refraction
27	Jithu Krishnagiri	Dilation &Refraction(urgent)
28	Suresh	Dilation &Refraction
29	Mahesh	Derm opinion
30	Meeyan	Detailed overall evaluation
GLASSES PRESCRIBED for
31	Alagesan
32	Kamesh
33	Sundar
34	Ramesh
35	Kannan
36	Vijayakumar

These details have been passed on to the Superintendent and the Medical Officer of the Royapuram Government Home for further medical action.

Minutes of the meeting held on June 16th 2010

Main decisions:

Mentorship program is agreed upon for Royapuram Govt Home

Every HUGS volunteer will mentor a group of children on their overall personality development (including academic, sports, psychological).

The idea is to educate children beyond reading and writing, to acquire all skills, a sense of pride, to develop a positive attitude and to learn while having fun...

Starting off with a toy library concept,

We aim to harness the potential force of toys and games to mould the character and temperament of the children at the home, both in the home proper and in the reception unit. It firmly believes that toys and games (when chosen with the intended outcomes in mind), not only stop at amusing , but also develop imagination, stimulate creativity and spontaneity, encourage the free flow of thought, improve the power of observation & concentration and also teach values like discipline, honesty, truth, courage and so on. Play, and thus, healthy recreation and consequently socialization are essential for a child’s overall development.

For the mentor, it creates a clear syllabus on which to base his / her mentorship activities, and to provide a basic scaffolding for planning activities in a systematic manner. Not only does this ensure maximum utilization of the time that a mentor is able to share with the child, it also gives a mentor a sense of acomplishment, as, together with the child, he/she moves up the syllabus, and is simultaneously able to observe the development in his/her mentee.

Plan:

With the above goal, there are 2 things that are to be done:

1. Funding – Rs.30 K for the toy library

2. Volunteers

a. Each team member needs to get at least one volunteer for the mentorship program. Volunteer selection criteria include an ability to spare 2 hours/ fortnight, a commitment for atleast 6 such sessions, an innate interest in the welfare of the less privileged, and empathy towards these children. All other skills may be acquired on the job.

These activities need to be completed by July 10^th.

Our plan is to start off with the first mentoring session on July 17^th .

The date and venue of the next meeting will be intimated by email to the team members.

Interested individuals are encouraged to contact Renita (9894488797) or Feroz(9500059774), or mail in to us athugsindia@gmail.com, renitarajan@gmail,com orzeeferoz@gmail.com.

ROYAPURAM HOME PROJECT

A very pleasant atmosphere awaited the HUGS - Royapuram project team, as we entered the Government Boys Home, Royapuram, on the 6th June, 2010, Sunday. We were duly greeted by the staff, who had turned out promptly, despite the holiday. The Optometrists from MN Eye hospitals, had set the camp in motion with vision testing and the Ophthalmologist in our team(HUGS - Royapuram project ), Dr Radha Annamalai, started off with consultations. The rest of us, Feroz, Karthik, Monica, Nivash, Divya, Sharmila, Sindhu, Rama and I (Renita), set off to interact and gather some data from the staff and the inmates. Sundar joined in a while later. Our task was to speak to the inmates (each of them) and get to know them, and obtain a basic set of information on their family, academic levels and hobbies and interests; this activity was aimed at individualizing our solutions to suit each inmate to ensure success of the project. Overall, met around 125 children, ages ranging from 3 to 17, in two groups, those belonging to the mainstream home and those in the reception unit. Interaction with the latter was to change the way we perceived the whole exercise. First, we (HUGS - Royapuram project )met up with each of the house boys ( as they are called) and we learnt about the circumstances under which they landed up at this home. Some of the stories were very sad to listen to - but more about these, after complete data collation. Then came the boys in the reception unit - some having stayed there for months and some as recent as a day or two. Of these 50 boys, 30 were from other states, and more than half of them could hardly communicate in Hindi, hailing from places like Orissa and West Bengal. Little Rakesh Mallik, with bright beads for eyes, held me captive with his explanation of how easy it is for me to find his home - its over there by the gully, and he would point it out to me if I were to take me there. Rakesh was picked up from the railway station, and all he knows of his native place is the name, ?Gilli/? Dilli village in West Bengal. And when I asked him if he knew of any phone number, he said he didnt - but he could show me the home anytime!More stories later, we were sure we wanted to come back to this place. Even as this was going on, we met the staff, and they spoke to us about the issues and problems they face on a daily basis looking after the inmates. The doctor in charge was very friendly and supportive and told us that he would definitely follow up on the prescriptions for the spectacles and those requiring further ophthalmological evaluation. We had a very good briefing session by Mrs Glory, the Superintendant of the Home, and she gave us an outline of the history of the home. Once known for its redundancy, she spoke of how Royapuram Home improved from the last position to the top five among Government run homes in TamilNadu.



Over lunch, the team , HUGS - Royapuram project, discussed possible options and interventions, and we settled on a mentorship model - which is currently being finetuned.

We expect that we would need about 50 - 60 volunteers who would go on to mentor these deserving children, based on a syllabus to be put in place by the Project Team, HUGS - Royapuram project. Volunteers would pass a selection process( we can never be cautious enough, when it comes to role models for these children), and would commit a minimum of 12 hours over 3 months - though once the project is pilot run and all set, we would look for a commitment of atleast 24 - 36 hours over 6 months.

The HUGS - Royapuram project syllabus would include academic and play learning, fostering talents and focusing on extracurricular activities, psychosocial support, and regular follow up.

We hope that we will be able to provide these children some of the support that they are in need of, in partnership with the Government and the staff of the Home.



Interested individuals are encouraged to contact Renita (9894488797) or Feroz(9500059774), or mail in to us at hugsindia@gmail.com, renitarajan@gmail,com or zeeferoz@gmail.com, we are recruiting volunteers now. An innate interest and empathy towards the less privileged, initiative and enthusiasm in interacting with children, strong ethical values, and a pleasant personality are some characteristics we look for.



Preliminary data and calendar for this HUGS - Royapuram project will be posted here soon.

POA

A few visits to Thellai and several meetings later, the POA now is to set up a mobile game service - I call it that till better names evolve.

Ideas for the same are welcome.

We plan to have this van which goes to various locations (being worked on) and provide children an exposure to games and experiments that will help stimulate them in any of the following fields - vocational, academic, life-skills, value based education, for about 2 hours a week or so (per location, that is).

This is only a first step in our larger plan to have a set up where we promote education encompassing the above four disciplines.

Please do send in your ideas and comments, to help this project perform the best it can.

Teeing off some action!

A word of thanks to all those who attended the meeting on 23rd August 2009, most specially to Mrs Rebecca, for facilitating and guiding the session. The discussion was intended to bring out ideas on conducting needs assessment surveys, and it managed to bring out some great ones!

Accordingly, we have marked up 6th September on our calendars, to start our first field visit for the second project. A transect walk is planned in our project village, in Vellore district, on the 6th September. During this transect walk, we intend to build rapport with the villagers and gather some basic data, and look at the feasibililty of conducting a Dermatology camp soon after.

We need help in the following fields - field work (in Vellore), flash website building, 2D animation, and of course, in Advocacy, Fund Raising and Public Relations. Interested volunteers do write in to hugsindia@gmail.com, let's join together and make "EDUCATION FOR ALL" a reality!

News for the first half of August 2009

Yes, an update on what we have done so far since regrouping.

As a bottom -up or participatory approach towards identifying projects in villages (of course, all projects aimed at child education), HUGS will be putting together groups of volunteers to do field survey - preferably using the RAPID RURAL APPRAISAL approach. Later on, as defined by prevalent needs we will assess feasibility of setting up community run projects using the PARTICIPATORY RURAL APPROACH. Meanwhile, we also are looking at structured studies using questionnaires to quantify individual problems. Overall, our information gathering looks to employ the optimal tool to obtain the best possible info, since such information is vital to planning specific projects. The surveys and subsequent projects are to be based in Vellore, where we already have an introduction through our footwear donation project.

As for the team, we have Sherab and Vetri in Planning, Benjamin and Becky in Fundraising, Nachi and Karthik in website design and maintanence, Renita and Feroz in fieldwork, Partha, Sashi and Kurien as advisors.

New volunteers have come in, Latha Srinivasan, Arun and Monica, and will be part of Budgeting, Advocacy and Fieldwork respectively.

HUGS encourages you to sign up in any capacity that you choose to contribute in, and we will make sure you have an enriching experience.

Events :

Group discussion for volunteers based in Chennai (or who can attend the meeting in Chennai), on the 23rd August, evening - time to be notified by mail.

Coming soon

HUGS website is being upgraded and will be available in its new avatar shortly.

Field visit planned to project village in Vellore district - date to be confirmed after meeting on 23rd August.