Robert and Shermina are well known at the Vrundavan hospital as they've taken many of the children there in emergencies as it is only two minutes walk from ‘The Mango House’. Vrundavan Hospital treats many of the foreigners who live and visit Goa as it is a private hospital with good facilities. Due to the good relationship with the hospital Kirsty (A volunteer who is a paramedic in the UK) and Robert went to see Dr. Digambar Niak, the Managing Director of Vrundavan Hospital, to ask if he could support Children Walking Tall by giving the children free check-ups. He was very good and instantly called a doctor down to meet us. We had a Dr Sanyogini for the first few weeks and now have Dr Karishma, visiting the house every week and has taken a huge pressure off the volunteers and staff: we’re very grateful to her for this special service. Krishma sees 5 or 6 children on each visit and we hope this will reduce the time the children are in discomfort and pain.

If you would like to see what other facilities the hospital has on offer then please visit their website at http://www.vrundavan.com.

Did you know...

 Poor health is a chronic problem for street children. Half of all children in India are malnourished, but for street children the proportion is much higher. These children are not only underweight, but their growth has often been stunted and it is very common to mistake a 12 year old for an 8 year old.

 Street children live and work amidst trash, animals and open sewers. Not only are they exposed and susceptible to disease, they are also unlikely to be vaccinated or receive medical treatment. Only two in three Indian children have been vaccinated against TB, Diphtheria, Tetanus, Polio and Measles; only one in ten against Hepatitis B. Most street children have not been vaccinated at all. They usually can not afford, and do not trust, doctors or medicines. If they receive any treatment at all it will often be harmful, as with kids whose parents place scalding metal on their bellies as a remedy for persistent stomach pain.

 Most street children work as rag-pickers, in which boys and girls as young as 6 years old sift through garbage in order to collect recyclable material. The children usually rise before dawn and carry their heavy load in a large bag over their shoulder. Rag-pickers can be seen alongside pigs and dogs searching through trash heaps on their hands and knees.

 Many of the children who visit 'The Mango House' rag pick when they don't come to school.

Where there are large groups of children, it’s only a matter of time before there’s an outbreak of a children’s illnesses. In the last few weeks about half of the children from one of the slums have come down with measles and, in fact, 5 ended up being admitted to hospital because they were so poorly.

The last month has been a real cause for concern and we had stopped the children from one of the slums from attending school to keep the spread of measles to a minimum. All the children have been getting good varied meals and vitamins each day since we started the school at the Mango House, which would have given them a fighting chance against measles. The children who required hospitalisation were admitted to the government hospital in Mapusa and a few of the children spent 5 days on drips and medicine to fight the disease.

One of the Mothers unfortunately said she would rather her two children be at home and die rather than go to hospital (as it meant someone staying with them from her family). It's a hard battle sometimes and this was the first case like this we'd come across which made it worse. We'd actually helped the mother in question when she was 9 months pregnant (Without knowing it) with her last child. We got her admitted to hospital as she was in terrible pain and in the end the doctors said she and the baby were lucky to live. Given this situation, we found it hard to understand her wishes to not admit her children to hospital. All we can do is take up the challenge to educate the parents in hope that this has a positive impact on the health and lives of the children.

 Measles is a huge killer among the children who live in slums around India. On average 1 in 5 slum children who develop measles die because they are malnourished. They can also develop secondary illnesses such as pneumonia.

Head lice can be a real problem. If one or two children get lice you can be sure that they’ll spread around the slum in no time at all. Which is exactly what happened about a month ago. With regular inspections and treatment we had the situation well under control, but unfortunately for one young girl, by the time she came to us, she had a huge nest of lice living in her hair. The problem was so severe that she’d developed several painful open sores at the back of her head. The only option was to totally shave off all her long hair: a hard task for any young girl. But she took it well and now looks very chic in a variety of hats she’s proud to wear to school every day. Her sores have healed well and she is much more confident and happy.

Several of the children have been suffering with bad chest problems such as bronchitis therefore we’ve recently bought a nebuliser to help some of the younger ones to breathe more easily. Thank you to Brian for his donation for the machine and some medicine.

In April we were visited by the health centre workers from Mapusa and they made sure all the children had their Polio vaccinations. The health workers returned on the Sunday 21st of May and Robert went round to all the slums that we work with and made sure all the children had their drops.

We’ve had as many as three babies at the Mango House day centre all of whom, at one time or another, have suffered from severe diarrhoea. Families in India don’t use nappies as they’re expensive to buy, however we couldn’t cope without them. When we first opened we’d overlooked one or two of the essentials, like nappies! Which made life, at times, very messy! Now we’re glad to report we have a permanent stock of nappies on hand.

We now have even more children visiting the Mango House. They’re coming from even further a field to join in with the activities at the house: some are brought here by their parents on their way to work; others make their own way in groups, each time trying to come earlier and earlier. The rest we pick and walk with along the busy main road.

The new children fit in straight away and there doesn't seem to be any problems integrating children from the different areas.

We are now reaching the limit of the children we can help and the projects we can undertake at the Mango house each day with the resources we have. We’re hoping to be able to extend our work here at the start of the next tourist season in October when we normally get double the amount of volunteers. These extra pairs of hands will allow us to start more projects and help even more new children.

www.childrenwalkingtall.com/Pictures9.htm

We managed to get in another trip to the beach this month. Jules had a dream that she had sponsored the children to go to the beach before the monsoon started. We were a little bit worried that the sea had become too rough, but at the start of May it calmed down enough and gave us the chance to take them again. The beach was empty - not a person in sight in either direction - for most of the day, which meant the children could be as loud as they liked!

About 20 children came on the outing and they all had a great day. The sea stayed calm at Ashwem and the children enjoyed their chance to run through the warm water and play in the sand. The day finished with a game of tug of war and refreshments before heading home. Thank you to Antonio’s Paradise beach shack for all their help.

Children Walking Tall is all about giving children a chance in life. This means providing them with basic education and, just as important, giving them the opportunity to have lots of FUN! Here are just a few ways we succeeded in bringing smiles to lots of faces in April and May.

Although the children who come to the Mango House are mostly Hindu we thought that Easter was a good excuse to have a bit of fun with the children. We organised a three-legged sweet hunt around the garden and forest area. As you can imagine it was chaos, but great to see the kids working together to achieve a goal (getting as many sweats as possible!) It was very funny to watch! Premi was the winner of the day as she was one of the few to work out that some goodies were at the front of the house, when everyone else was searching the forest.

She very kindly shared her winnings with some of the other children and the volunteers.

Yoga originates from India so it’s not surprising that you’ll find it being taught in many schools across Goa. Even though many of the schools in Goa are Catholic, yoga is seen as a non-religious practice that helps children to grow in confidence, as well as helping them to become physically strong and flexible. Helping them to stay quiet and calm is also an added bonus!!

www.ChildrenWalkingTall.com/Pictures3.htm

Since we’ve opened the Mango House as a day centre we’ve been lucky enough to have Cyril, and some of his teachers from Cyril Yoga in Calangute, coming once a week to teach the children for an hour. Now most of those teachers have returned home due to the end of the tourist season, but we’re lucky that one of our volunteers, Jules, lives in Goa full-time and also happens to be a yoga teacher, so she’s taken over for the summer and monsoon period.

The kids love it and often fall into hysterics as they try to get into some of the complicated poses. But yoga also has its quiet time and we’ve never seen all the children so quiet for such a long period of time. Hmmmm….maybe we should step-up the yoga-slot to every day…….!!!

As well as teaching basic English, Maths and Hindi we also want to help bring out the natural creativity in the children. With the help of several volunteers through April and May we have had a great collection of craft lessons, including: making hats; drawing round themselves and then sticking material and beads to make their clothes; creating paper mache heads of each other; making rice shakers, bracelets, necklaces and henna tattoos and blow painting. All of this also helps to make their morning schooling more interesting and varied. www.ChildrenWalkingTall.com/Pictures1.htm

One of the bigger challenges was to make a huge mural on a large piece of material. The children used sticks, stones, material, paint, beads and leafs to make the 3.5 x 2 meter creation that now proudly hangs in the reception of the Mango House. If anyone has any good creativity ideas for a then please let us know…. If you want to plan a session during a volunteering experience, even better! www.ChildrenWalkingTall.com/Pictures2.htm

It was a serious moment as the first Annual Children Walking Tall sports day kicked off with an Olympic-style egg and spoon race! Unfortunately, we had to quickly boil another egg due to the mascot (our dog Tilly) eating one!

The children got to explore their competitive sides as they did their best to win: the sack race; the three legged race; the ball control race and finally (and easily the most fun!) the ‘put on a dress, a silly hat and a couple of pairs of armbands, then run down to the end, come back and then dress the next team member up’ race!!!.

The boys didn’t seem to have any qualms about putting a dress on and the children loved it. As did the volunteers and staff who were all crying with laughter!

For pictures from the day click here http://www.ChildrenWalkingTall.com/Pictures8.htm

Six volunteers and Robert decided to be extras in a Bollywood film that was being record in the capital of Goa, Panjim, this month. The scouts required ‘foreigners’ to be extras for a few scenes being filmed in a restaurant at the Marriot hotel. Due to this it had to be filmed at night so as not to disturb the hotel guests. So the filming started around 10pm and everyone arrived back home at around 6am. Most of the volunteers managed to make it in to the Mango house for at least half of the next day, although they were a little sensitive to light and noise…!

The film is scheduled to be out in Sept/Oct. Filming isn’t the most exciting pastime and I’m not sure how many would do it again, but it’s great to see what happens on the film set. The company made for a great evening and Carl even made a second night and is hoping to do a few more before filming finishes.

It’s mango season in Goa so it’s a great time to be a child visiting the Mango House! We have a large mango tree in the garden (hence the home’s name) that has been duly shedding its abundant fruit for the last month. The tree was giving us about 50 Mangoes each day, which was plenty to give the children fruit or juice every day, plus some left over to give to people at the slums we work at. We were even able to give some to children in the Margoa slums that we’d previously given clothes to.

It has been great been able to pick the fruit from our own garden and get the children involved in squeezing the Mango Juice! We’ve probably made 200 ltrs of juice over the last month. Unfortunately, the tree is nearly bare now, but all is not lost as it’s almost time for the Jack Fruit to be ready to eat.

We were lucky enough to have some fantastic supporters this year who brought out clothes and other items for the children. We pride ourselves on making sure the clothes go to the children who need it, so on two days in May we filled up Kirsty's car (Kirsty is one of our long-term volunteers) cars and drove to about 20 different slum areas in Margao, Vasco and Panjim.

As soon as we arrived at the slums the turn out was amazing, sometimes unbelievable (have a look at some of the online pictures). We started at a slum just before Margao which was about half a mile off road and when we arrived it consisted of about 15 small shacks in a line. The children (and parents) quickly came out and started to line up, it was a great atmosphere and was a great start to the day. We made sure that all the children received clothes and also handed out a few of the large clothes to the parents. As it was in the middle of the Mango season we also brought enough Mangoes to go round.

The children were great, as were the parents, so we gave the clothes out in no time and headed off to the next slum. By the end of the first day we had visited around 10 different slums, some easier than others, but it was lots of fun and the children were so happy with their new clothes. We had started to run out of girls clothes at one of the later slums so decided to go back on the Saturday to make sure everyone got some.

The second day started by visiting the site that we had missed giving some of the girls clothes to and then we went on to another 9 or 10 slums. Both days were exhausting and it wouldn't have been possible without the help of Kirsty, Sue, Aloyisius and Javid who joined Rob. In the end we had easily given out over 1200 pieces of clothing and discovered a few more areas to help.

There is three sets of photos on the website from the two days, so please see what a difference your donations make and how many children we can help due to the support we get.

www.ChildrenWalkingTall.com/Pictures.htm

I’d known for a while the date that I was returning to the Uk but time just seemed to creep up on me. With the outbreak of Measles and all the other problems at the slums I was very worried about how Rob was going to cope if I went to the UK. Two days before I was due to set off I got very sick. After visiting the hospital it was decided that instead of spending 12 hours on a train to Mumbai where I was going to be catching my flight to the Uk, I would instead have to fly to Mumbai. After a mad rush to Panjim I managed to get a flight booked and returned to the house to start packing……. I was supposed to be leaving in 5 hours!!

My journey to the UK was very good although I still couldn’t eat or drink as I had a stomach infection. The first thing I noticed then I stepped off the plane at Heathrow was the weather….. it was very cold and throwing it down with rain, now I remembered what I liked about Goa.

The first few days being back home were very strange. There was loads to talk about and lots of people to see so they went by in a slight blur. Then the real work started. My time in the UK was supposed to have been part holiday and part charity fundraising. However this hasn’t happened. Thanks to all the support and people from around the world there is an ever lasting list of jobs that I need to do whilst I am home. I have managed to meet up with a number of potential volunteers, fundraisers, business people, companies and schools to talk about the charity. We also took part in a big fundraising event at the Asia Show in Wembley, a stall and street collection in Barnstaple and visited people in Bristol, Devon, Bristol, Harrogate, Leicester….. the list just went on.

I have really missed the children whilst I have been back here although it has been great to see my nephew and new three month old niece. The things that I miss the most are the children coming and saying ‘Good Morning Shermina’, the spontaneous hugs and cuddles that they give, seeing their happy faces when they have done something new……. So many things that you don’t realise until you don’t see them for a while. Oh well, I will be back in Goa again soon and next month will write a full run down of everything I have done. Bye for now

When we started work we were always a little worried about how many volunteers we would get during the monsoon period. Thankfully up until now we have been very lucky and had some great support. We still have eleven volunteers helping us although 3 of them will be going home very shortly.

Thank you to all the ones ( Rachael, Carl, Dave 'The Teacher', Gareth, Jane , Kim, Darian, Jules, Kirsty, Sue, Russell ) that are still with us, some of which are staying for the whole monsoon and of course thank you to everyone who has helped us since we have had children at 'The Mango House'

The ones that got away are - Andre, Bijal, Claudia, Ellie, Fran, John, Julian, Lilly, Maggie, Perri, Sarah, Sunil, Javid, Melanie, Isabel, Neville, Kristi, Javid and Sunil.

Probably the most emotional goodbye was for our long term volunteer, Claudia, who has been with us the whole season. Claudia was also the first teacher at the Karaswada slum and has been with them nearly every day since. Thankfully she has not left us for good and will be back out in September or October for the whole season again.

A special mention should go to Kym and Kirsty who have been keeping the house in order while Shermina has been in England. It's always a great team effort and of course we can't forget Aloysius, Sangeeta and John who also work at the house.

There have been a few new experiences added to the website Click here for Volunteer Experiences.

We were a little caught out by the Monsoon which has hit Goa early this year. The children were all stranded at 'The Mango House' when the downpour started. Dave, Aloysius and Robert drove into Mapusa to quickly buy some raincoats for the children.

On the first day we bought about 30 coats and the second day another 20. The children were so excited with them it was great to see, amazingly we managed to get the right sizes except for little Kieran who was just too small for them, well, he'll grow into it! :o) They are all very bright colours which helps when we're walking them home in the rain.

Ambert 'The Goan Dentist' was kind enough to offer free treatment for a few of our children, unfortunately he was too busy during the season, but came back to Goa and gave us the chance to take 8 children to see him. The children's teeth come in two categories, either just perfect (as they don't eat much sugar based products), or completely eaten away as they eat far too much, it's quite easily seen between families.

The first to see the dentist were some of the older ones who had an obvious need to see the dentist. The children either had fillings or had a tooth removed. The children were so brave as this was a completely new experience for them. Even the motorised chair made them jump. Ambert was very good with the children and kept their spirits up. Although many wouldn't let go of Roberts hand during the treatment.

For more information on dental work in Goa then please visit his website here http://www.goadentist.com/