December 2004

Introduction
It has been another busy month here in Goa, the film festival has finished but the number of tourists is still growing steadily, especially Indian tourists who come down from Bombay for their Christmas holidays. There is still lots of work being done in Panjim and the surrounding areas, mainly the roads which bring in whole families, mothers, fathers and the older children working at the roadside breaking rocks with hammers and breaking the tarmac with pickaxe’s. Hardly any machinery is used for this type of work as it is much cheaper to employ staff than to hire a digger for a day. When both parents work, the children are left to fend for themselves in their make shift tents by the side of the road, many have clothes that barely cover them or are held together by a piece of string or a safety pin. Most of the tourists would only see a glance of this as they pass in taxi’s on a trip to the waterfalls or to the markets. Some tourists still think there is no problem in Goa for street children, the true face of the problem can’t be seen in the tourist areas, it’s once you leave these areas, only by a mile sometimes when you see how people are really living.

If you haven’t noticed, Christmas is nearly upon us and the stalls in the markets here in Goa have only just started selling the Christmas decorations which surely have been lining the shelves in England since September. Everyone here at Children Walking Tall would like to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a prosperous new year. Thank you to everyone who has supported us during our first few months, - without these people none of this would be possible. Hopefully, 2005 will bring us our first home and the chance to make a lasting effect on the lives of children, who are neglected, abused or forced to work.

We hope you enjoy this instalment of the newsletter, if you have any queries or comments then please contact us at .

Website
The website is going from strength to strength allowing us to provide more content to give everyone who uses it a richer experience. There are now six different photo albums for you to look through, remember that the small pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them! The photos that have been added this month are:

Slum health camp
Many of the children living in the slums never receive medicine that may save their lives, or prevent a condition that will stay with them for life. We are hoping to support the current health camps by supplying extra medicines which the families themselves can not afford to buy. Providing them with fresh fruit would also help ease the situation as it would help boost their own immune systems as many do not receive enough vitamins to help them stay healthy.

Rubbish Tip
These photos were just a few I took on the same day as one of the health visits. The photos show children working at one of the huge rubbish tips close to Panjim. See ‘What's Been Happening’ for the full story.

Panjim Film Festival
On the lighter side there are now pictures from the last night of the Panjim Film Festival. The first week of December gave Panjim a reason to celebrate as the streets were lit up with Fairy lights as Goa hosted an International Film Festival. Street children had the chance to watch movies, both English and Hindi on large screens on the beach near Panjim. There were also many other types of entertainment like these Indian dancers pictured here. * please visit the website for the photos

Hopefully before the New Year we will be able to add some more photos. We already have some in stock but haven’t had the time to add them to the website, and with Christmas close there will surely be some excellent photo opportunities with the children at Christmas.

Other Updates
Photos aren’t the only thing that have been updated on the website, the newsletter section now has a list of all the previous news items in chronological order allowing everyone to catch up if they’ve been lucky enough to visit Goa and not seen the website for a few weeks. A very positive step is that people have seen the needs list and have requested to purchase items for us, due to this we’re given it a make over, there are now descriptions of each of the items and hopefully it will continue to bring in people willing to sponsor items. Unfortunately all of this comes at a price, due to the success of the website we’ve had to purchase extra space to accommodate the content, we now have four times the space which should last us till next year, I would like to thank GoaCom for giving us a discount on the price.

Another new item to the website is the ability to give donations online with the help of www.GiveNow.org. Where ever you see the Give Now image you will be able to click on it and donate directly to Children Walking Tall.

Fundraising
Fundraising is ongoing and progressing steadily, unfortunately we didn’t succeed in the Magic FM promotion, but are still hoping for the chance that we will be lucky with the Daily Mail promotion.

*How To Help* with fundraising
1. Please spread the word about Children Walking Tall, A simple way is to forward this newsletter to your friends and Family asking if they could find the time to read it and to visit our website.
2. If you work at a company that might sponsor any of our projects please get in touch.
3. Be a member of our UK fundraising team by distributing leaflets or raising money.

Indian Night
The Indian night in Barnstable was a great success, Maureen Charters managed to organise the whole event herself, she experienced a few moments of worry but was delighted to find out that everyone enjoyed it and wanted to know when the next one would be! A special mention for the night goes out to Lorraine who did most of the cooking. Maureen and friends managed to raise £350 for Children Walking Tall.

Graham Cooper and QP Publishing
Graham Cooper came to Goa for a holiday, and brought a bag full of goodies, pens, pencils, toys, books and more which had been collected by himself and the staff from QP Publishing. Thank you to all of you, some of the donations will be used over the Christmas period as were hoping to be involved in a drawing competition, unfortunately the pencils came unsharpened, so I’ll spend a few hours sharpening 160 pencils… :oS

Lorna and friend gave Christmas presents
Many thanks to Lorna and friend who contacted me as they had brought some Christmas presents out for the children. These will be given out over Christmas this year and we will hopefully get some photos posted on the website by the new year.

Donations from the needs list
Many thanks to Laura and Stuart who has probably given us the most important commodity, clean water, they went to our website and decided to help by donating money towards a water filter. Much of the water used in houses in Goa comes from wells, so can be full of bacteria and debris

Smoothly goes…
Thanks to Sarah Keith who has donated a grinder ready for our new house/flat. This is a very important part of the Indian kitchen as it allows all those lovely creamy curries to be made.

Clothes and Toys
Haley and partner brought a collection of children’s clothes and a few toys out for us. They’ll be ideal and will be put to good use. Haley has also offered to help us fund raise in England which requires a special thank you. “Thanks”

Sponsored bike ride
Brenan Coates from Mansfield peddled his way to raising £100 for Children Walking Tall last month by doing a sponsored bike ride around Nottinghamshire. He is only 15 years old but cycled 36 miles to support the children. Thank you very much!

Christmas Raffle
If you haven’t bought your tickets, then unfortunately it’s too late, the winners have now been drawn and over 50 prizes have been won. Thank you to John Elias and all of his friends in Brighton who donated the majority of the prizes. Everybody really enjoyed receiving them. Altogether the raffle rose over £500. A list will be put up on the website shortly of the winners.

Hasland Hall Community School
Shermina has been working at Hasland Hall Community School for the past few months as a mathematics teacher. During her last week she did talks to all of the children about the charity and India. On the last day of term the school held a non uniform day to raise money for the children of India and raised over £650. Thank you to all the teachers and children that donated the money.

Charity Run
Gary Lowe and J Carlos raced against each other in a 10km run in Bolsover last week. The children at the school sponsored them both and had a competition to see which person they thought would win the race. Gary won in around 45 minutes, but J Carlos was not far behind finishing in 57 minutes. Thank you to both of you for all your time and effort. They managed to raise £145.

The Mystery Man
Thank you again to the mystery man from the Botany Avenue Car Boot Sales in Mansfield. Every week he comes and donates some money towards the charity. Last week he went up to Shermina and gave her £100 for the children to help them have a great Christmas. We have asked him his name a number of times but he says he doesn't need thanking on the website.

Donations
Many thanks go out to John Pickering, Jodie Smith and Mike & Sally for there kind donations this month.

Kylie Minogue
OK, I’ve saved my favourite till last. Kylie, everyone knows Kylie, we’ve always had time for Kylie Minogue, even back in the days of the locomotion and since she’s recaptured her pop queen crown she is now bigger than ever. Kylie Minogue, and Terry Blamey Management have been very kind and donated Children Walking Tall with a stack of original Kylie records from her collection. We’ve been told that some could be worth a tidy some…. Hopefully sometime in the New Year we’ll Auction them off. If by some chance Kylie manages to read this then please feel free to come and visit us once we have our house set up. Maybe you could sing a Hindi song and make a record over here. Thank you so much.

What's Been Happening

A suitable house/flat
We are continuing to investigate several properties; we are now looking into flats in Mapusa, Panijm, Margao and Vasco where we can make a start. This will allow us to help children more quickly, the ideal would be to buy a property but we still need more support before we can afford to do this, so up until we raise the funds we will use a rented flat as a base. Doing this will allow us to more quickly help the children who need it, and give them a place to eat, learn and rest.

Slums Visits
A girl, perhaps seven years of age caught our eye on a recent trip to a slum in Goa, India. She was stood in the doorway of her home, actually a brick building with corrugated iron roof, not sure if they owned the building or were just squatting before being moved on by the owners, but she had a dark sadness in her eyes. She could be so much more if the fancy dress she modelled didn’t have the rips and holes that showed a life of hard work and poor living conditions. Her skin was like that of a chimney sweep, covered in patches of dirt that could have been there for weeks. The bright bows in her hair faded by the dirt. While we were there her father beat her for not smiling. These are the children we want to help, the ones that really don’t have a chance of a real childhood, the chance just for clean clothes and a smile. Would you let your children ever experience just a day of what this girl wakes up to every morning?

The Pipe People
For the parents of families that work for less than one pound a day they might not even be able to afford the plastic sheeting that many use to make make-shift tents. For these a life living perhaps inside industrial pipes like the children we met in December, they were living by the side of the road near Panjim, a boy, perhaps 8 years old, a girl of 3 or 4, and a baby of 6 or 7 months living on sacks and the odd dirty cloth. Nothing to keep them warm except each other. They were miles from shops so don’t know how they coped for food and water. Due to the support of many of the holiday makers we were able to donate clothes and food to these children. Photographs will be posted on the website about this in the new year.

Food Visits
We managed to do a couple of trips to the slums to take food and clothes, greeted with a smile and then a mad rush for the food, only basic fruit was taken this time around, but hopefully we can start making this a regular occurrence.

Working at the Rubbish Tip
Children can be found working on the piles of rotting rubbish that is collected from the cities each day. They manage to make a few pence by sifting through the rubbish and collecting plastic that can be recycled. Sometimes they might find a few pieces of vegetables that aren’t too rotten that they can eat (see picture of girl with bag on her head on the website). There is no age limit set on these children, as soon as they can walk they can be found collecting the rubbish, their hands showing the effects of a life that has not given them a chance to have a proper childhood,. Broken bottles, sharp metal cans making marks in their hands as well as their minds. Some walk through the rubbish barefoot as they have no shoes.

Perhaps you could make a difference in the lives of the children. Make a donation to Children Walking Tall, if you have a preference on what the money should be spent on then tell us and we will try and make the money work the way you want it to. Other ways to help are to donate clothes, books, pens, toys, this can be especially helpful if you’re planning a trip to Goa and can bring them with you. The easiest thing that you can do is tell others about what we do, the more people who know the greater the chance we have at supporting children like these.

Do you have any comments about the newsletter? Would you prefer a shorter version? Would you like to see pictures in the newsletter? (Email with be larger if pictures are added) Please let us know what you would like as we are always wanting to improve what we do.

And Finally
If you would like to receive these monthly newsletters by email then please contact us at with the Subject Join Newsletter so that we can add your address to the mail list (please send from the email address you want to receive the newsletter). If you have received this email by mistake, or wish to cancel your monthly newsletter then send an email to with the subject Cancel Newsletter. Thanks from everyone at Children Walking Tall.