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Beneficiaries
In India
Stop the baby girls feticide and infanticide
Through the intermediary of Doctor Meeta Singh of Jaipur, we are supporting the NGO SURE which is our partner on the spot. In the State of Rajastan they are fighting against and in view to eventually eliminate this terrible curse that is the selection and destruction of the female foetus and baby girls infanticides. It necessitates overcoming deeply ingrained patriarchal mindsets, viewing sons as benedictions and girls as liabilities particularly due to the disproportionate dowry the tradition demands as compared with parents means and to the belief that only a boy or a close male parent will, when proceeding with the cremation final rites, permit the father’s or mother’s soul to be liberated from the body. The presence of women at the cremation is forbidden and for the soul to be reincarnated in a next life, it is an essential condition that it can leave the dead body. Both practices are illegal but tradition remains stronger than law.
Happy Kids is managing directly four projects there:
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A kindergarten in Chennai where more than forty kids from the slums are taken care of during the day thus allowing their elders to go to school rather than having to keep them. There they receive a daily meal, are being pampered and are made to play and do some do-it-yourself. The sponsors receive a quarterly newsletter.
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Also in Chennai, a young boy from the slum, Ilayadasan, suffering from a severe kidney disease is owing his survival to the weekly dialysis. His condition remains worrying. The ever increasing cost of the treatment, which is more than ever necessary, is being covered through sponsorships . The sponsors receive a quarterly newsletter.
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In Pondicherry, Happy Kids, through sponsorships, is ensuring that an abandoned teenager, Shiba is being well taken care of. She is pursuing her studies aiming at obtaining a MBA in English.
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In order to give to a few kids of the slum in Chennai, whose parents are very poor, the opportunity to pursue a complete school education, we submit the proposal of a sponsorship to cover its whole cost. The sponsor receives twice a year the detailed school results and some news of the child and has the possibility to write to him or even to meet him should he travel to Chennai. The sponsorship would stretch over the 10-11years of the education and the total expenditure would amount to about CHF 4'000.- i.e.CHF 350.- per year or CHF 30.- per month. It is obviously a long term project and the sponsor must be fully aware of the duration of his commitment as the child will rely on his support until the end of his education.
In Switzerland
Julien's project
- In memory of our young neighbour, Julien Porchetwho died of a leukaemia on 1st June, 2007, aged three and a half, we decided to support in Switzerland associations and projects dedicated to seriously ill children.
We financially support a professional storyteller, Mrs. Diane Baatard. She spends numerous hours making the little patients forget their ordeal at the department of paediatric haematology-oncology of the Geneva Hospital.
A team of volunteers is gathering monthly. They are following at CHUV (Lausanne hospital), at HUG (Geneva hospital) and at home children undertaking a personal project helping them to somehow keep control over their life in spite of their long and distressing treatment. Thus these children, presently undergoing chemotherapy or suffering from cystic fibrosis were able to select their personal project and implement it under the guidance of our volunteers: a girl, passionately fond of fashion, could meet with a designerand is creating a dress designed by herself; a boy, captivated by the police, has built a model of police station under the supervision of one of our volunteers who is a cabinet maker. He also visited a police station with a full tour of all the activities. A young boy, in-patient at HUG in view of a bone marrow graft, has taken drawing lessons given by a comic strips drawer. Some others have followed music lessons or cooking courses.
A meeting with the medical and auxiliary nursing staff has taken place at HUG in orderto present them our new projects which were welcome.
These projects have been at the origin of beautiful encounters and we are hoping for many more.
- Happy Kids is proud to have collaborated with other associations in order to support the first project which has been fully initiated and planned by young patients treated for cancer at the Geneva hospital.
This idea came to Angeles (11) and to Léon (12) who were dreaming for themselves and their fellow patients of a trip to St-Paul de Vences to stay a while in the Treetop Huts there. They planned it all out like real tourism pros.
With the help of Diane, the storyteller in the cancer department and of a group of volunteers they organised a week-end at the Galerie de la Ferme de la Chapellein Lancy in order to collect funds for their trip to the trees.
The keynote of the event was art and friendship and it was a wonderful success with the sale of paintings offered by local artists, a concert of classical music, a delicious brunch and last but not least a fashion show presented by Géraldine, our favourite designer, under the control of Angeles.
An exhibition was displaying some of the personal projects proposed by Happy Kids and Project Julien to the young in-patients:
- Photographs taken by Emmanuelle while following the courses with Emanuele the photographer.
- Léon's drawings done together with Gilles, the cartoonist.
- Angeles' fashion sketches done under the supervision of Géraldine, the designer who has been teaching Angeles for some months.
On top of it the brunch was cooked by Chistian Chistensen with the help of Florian, Amélie and Clara who are his pupils under Project Julien.
Insummary it was a beautiful opportunity to see the spectacular progress of our little geniuses and to meet them again with a lot of emotion.
It was an opportunity as well to realize what great energy these young artists are able to invest in their activities even though they are undergoing heavy treatments. It shows how their craving and enthusiasm can overcome the limitations imposed by their illness.
Click here to see the flyer and pictures for this event.
The magic brushes
The magic brushes are offering to children in hospital (or sick at home) the possibility to spend colourful moments thanks to painting on silk.
Worldwide
Fondation Nicolas
Foundation established in February 2008 aiming at widening the circle of sponsors and donors wishing to support the school complex « Nicolas de Preux » in the suburb of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. Its construction started in 2004 and it includes a nursery school receiving more than one hundred kids since the fall of 2006, three primary classes opened in autumn 2008 for 150 children and the next step is the building of three additional classes in 2009 for 300 children of all six levels of primary school. In this connection Fondation Nicolas wishes to improve the medical care to the kids and develop other activities contributing to the community mutual aid.
Jyoti’s Joy is a totally independent association established in 2003 in Lonay (Switzerland) by Ellen Dobler-Kane. It is aiming at supporting a schooling program for destitute children and providing the necessary financing, managing the funds and supervising the operation on the spot in order to keep abreast of the real children’s needs. This project is managed in Kathmandu by Jyoti, a twenty-nine year old courageous woman and is meant to provide education for Nepalese kids in difficulties, disregarding any ethnic, political or religious factors. Presently the project involves 26 children and students as well as 4 salaried Nepalese collaborators. The Swiss members of the association are all volunteers.
Lotti Latrous is struggling in the slums of Abidjan for helping poverty-stricken people and the victims of AIDS. She notably opened there an hospice for dying people but also, and this is the reason for our support, a reception centre and an orphanage for all the kids whose parents are dying of AIDS.
Association Enfants des collines
Enfants des collines is a humanitarian association established in 2004 by Cléa and Nora Rupp from Echandens. In collaboration with a Benin NGO, “Humanité Plus”, “enfants des collines’ are aiming at the improvement of living conditions for children in the villages of Mougnon and Allohoun –Oukanne in the Zou province in south Benin.
That goal is reached through: sponsoring of orphans and victims of children traffic allowing them to go to school and receive a daily meal, micro-credits to start up farming, access to drinking water through the financing and installation of a pump, improvement of sanitary conditions by building toilets, information to the parents about the hazards of children traffic, about malnutrition and lack of hygiene.
To apply this program and to cover the salary of “Humanité Plus” members, the funds required are relatively modest as compared to the large improvement to the quality of life for the countrymen and their children.
Népal, Enfance et Lumière (NEL)
Népal, Enfance et Lumière, an association established in 1993, has as a goal to take entire responsibility for small girls from destitute families enabling them to study in a good boarding school in Katmandu.
The children are selected in collaboration with Nepalese social workers. The small girls are mainly coming out of the slums, of carpets factories where they work twelve hours a day, of jail where children are being held with their parents if there is nobody else to take care of them.
In 2007 close to hundred kids and teenagers are going to school or college thanks to NEL.
Soucy, the first girl helped by NEL is presently our voluntary contact on the spot and is in charge of an orphanage for a French NGO.
In 2006 expenses were limited to 4% of the donations and sponsorships.
Enfants de Cusco is an association established in 1978 in Lausanne by Marguerite Bessard whose objective was helping destitute children in Cusco, Peru.
In 1992 the association, in order to better control the use of funds, established a Peruvian NGO, Niños del Cusco and bought a house in Cusco to shelter a nutritional and education centre, the CRIEN.
At the CRIEN are treated ill fed kids aged 0 to 5. The child and his mother are coming to the centre from 8am to 4pm from Monday to Friday. There they receive two meals a day and benefit from free medical consultations and dental care. The mothers are taught nutrition, hygiene, family planning and handwork. The CRIEN can accommodate up to 20 children simultaneously together with their mother and the treatment lasts between 3 and 6 months depending on the seriousness of the malnutrition. In order to ensure some prevention, courses are now given to pregnant women and breast-feeding mothers .
All the paid personnel is Peruvian; full time there are a director/manager who is a social worker, a nurse, a night watchman, a cook; part time there are a dietician, a physiotherapist, a paediatrician and a handwork teacher and as volunteers two Swiss trainees and a dentist.
The monthly budget amounts to Fr. 5’000.-. All the donated funds are reaching the CRIEN and Marguerite Bessard is checking each spent sol there.