Our mission: “Helping children in need by improving their physical, psychological, affective and social well being and thus enable them to become autonomous and responsible adults.”
Key operating principles:
* Qualitative, flexible, child-centred approach
* Zero administrative costs in Europe: donations integrally spent on the field projects.
In order to achieve our mission, we operate 4 programmes. The sections below recap the most defining characteristics of these programmes.
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Kids Home
Kids Home opened in November 2003. Currently 10 children are living in the house as full time resident in a family-like environment. The children were entrusted to Kids Home either by the regional orphanage or by their families.
The children of Kids Home come from various destructured families such as single parent families (due to a divorce or a death ; often because of AIDS), some of them were already entrusted to other family members or were already orphans, some were abused or neglected and others came from alcoholism-ridden families, from ethnic minorities thereby facing a lot of discrimination.
Living in Kids Home means having access to nutritious meals, health and hygiene facilities. As part of the project, children are also enrolled in a private school which increases their opportunity to access to a higher level of education and in the future find a suitable job. To answer to children needs in the most relevant way, Kids Home chose to limit the number of children. The caretakers follow them up individually so as to have a better understanding of each of their situations.
The children who live in Kids Home are aged from 10 to 16 years old: 5 girls and 5 boys. To take care of them, 4 caretakers work with us: 3 on a permanent basis and 1 for the night shifts to provide them with all the attention and supervision they need. They all live together like a (big) family.
Even if Kids Home provides them with a family-like environment, the link between the children and their families is maintained through phone calls and holiday stays whenever possible.
Finally, each child who lives within Kids Home is individually sponsored, thus creating a meaningful relationship between an adult and a child.
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Individual support programme
The Individual Support Programme, created in 2005, is a children sponsoring programme. Children from the nearby Jed Yod school whose parents are encountering socio-economic difficulties are being sponsored by an individual or a family. The sponsoring consists in both financial, material help and socio educative counselling, given to the child and his/her family. The objective is to guarantee that the main needs of the children are satisfied while helping the whole family to attain sustainable economic conditions. All of the children also attend the Smile Project.
Within the families who are part of this project, the following problems were encountered: children living with a single parent or left in the care of other family members (either because their parents were dead, or remarried), health problems coupled with no health insurance, debt ridden families, alcoholism, illiteracy, and lack of professional qualifications, discrimination due to their ethnicity preventing them from accessing good jobs, education, claiming health benefits, earning property and moving freely.
With a sponsoring of 23 euros per month/per child, the support is used to pay for the child’s education (school book, uniforms, lunches and snacks). Every month, we visit the sponsored children at home and interview their families, in order to understand their situation better, to counsel them if necessary and to discuss with them how to best use the remaining money. Then, the necessary items are bought by the Kids Home; this way the sponsors are able to trace the use of the money. At the end of each month, a meeting of the children’s families takes place at the Kids Home. During this meeting, 5 euros per child is given to the family in cash, as well as the items bought on their request. If a family didn’t have any specific needs, a standard “pack” is given to them containing either hygiene products, clothing or educational materials such as colour pencils, books, etc. Once every 2 months 25 kilos of rice are given to each family. During the meeting, an art teacher comes to do activities with the children.
At the moment, 13 children are being sponsored through the Individual Support programme. Their sponsors receive regular letters and updates about their situations and many of them already came to visit them!
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Smile Project
In 2005, Kids Home has designed an after school program welcoming up to 40 children who are facing particular difficulties at home. The selection of the children is made with the collaboration of the nearby Jed Yod Primary School which is one of the few schools to accept Burmese migrants (Tai Yai) and hill tribe people.
The children who are attending the Smile Project come from poor, often illiterate families. Consequently, their parents have to work long hours to make a decent living and cannot provide adequate after-school supervision to their children. Moreover, most of the children are several years behind at school both because they used to live far from any school or couldn’t afford the school fees and therefore need extra academic supervision.
Every day of the week after the school closes; a mini bus brings the children safely to the Kids Home. During the Smile Project, the children can join different activities such as sport, drawing and homework support. Moreover, English classes are carried out by volunteer teachers by small group level and with a view to complement school programs. At the end of the activities, a healthy snack is provided to the children.
Finally, we visit every family twice a year to have a better understanding of their situation, to adapt our projects to their needs and sometimes it allows us to identify children who might need sponsoring.
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Tchin Tcho Nursery
The Tchin Tcho nursery opened in june 2008 as we realized that there was a great need for a place where children under schooling age (under the age of 4 years old) could stay for a few hours every day and receive adequate childcare so that their mothers could work. Indeed, those children come from families facing very difficult socio-economic situation and, to them, an extra income can make a decisive difference.
The Tchin Tcho nursery project provides children with a safe, agreeable and recreational place. The Kids Home meeting room as well as the garden have been reorganized and furnished in order to accommodate up to 12 young children all day while the other children are at school. Toys, educational material, colorful furnitures create a cheerful, healthy space. One mother is assisting in taking care of these children. A professional nurse is taking care of the children and is also there to advise the parents.
The Kids Home provides nappies and milk, as well as a full lunch and healthy snacks. Transportation from the children’s houses to the nursery and back is also being provided. The project will accompany the children until they enter school age and therefore become possible beneficiaries of the already existing Smile Project. New children will then be selected. The Tchin Tcho Nursery Project is thus designed to be fully complementary with other existing Kids Home activities thereby maximizing the positive impact and sustainability.
Twice a term, an interview with the families is organized (home visit) in order to discuss their child development, to assess the impact of the project on their situation as well as to provide counseling.
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