« September / October 2009 »

Introduction

Children Walking Tall has been on overdrive recently as we do even more with the children in the slums each day, in the last few months we have also celebrated Diwali, Eid and are now getting ready for Christmas. (It's actually Christmas Day as I write this).

I will hopefully send out another newsletter in the first couple of weeks of the new year which will include all our Christmas stories... Let me take this opportunity to wish everyone a very merry (belated) Christmas and a prosperous new year.

We hope you enjoy this month's newsletter. If you have any queries or comments, then please contact us via the website http://www.childrenwalkingtall.com/Contact-Us.htm. To provide extra safety to the children we have changed or removed their names in this and all future newsletters.

	Introduction	Go
	What's Been Happening	Go
	Website	Go
	Fundraising	Go
	What Can You Do?	Go
	And Finally	Go

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What's Been Happening

Babu and the Mango Tree

With the festive season fast approaching, our thoughts once again turn to our foray of theatre. After resounding success in 2007 of Cinderella, the pressure was on to put on a production bigger, better and even more humiliating for everyone involved. To make it as engaging as possible, Steve came up with the idea to perform some in Hindi, which initially was greeted with enthusiasm, a task which proved more easily suggested than performed.

Having carved himself a reputation as being very much the man of the Mango House; building, fixing, acting masculine, Matt revealed a completely secret side by suggesting a number of his favourite pantomimes. Although hard pressed to choose, he convinced us that Jack and the Beanstalk was the one.

Whilst at home, we are all very aware of Jacks environment; giants, giant beanstalks and golden eggs are a bit less common in this particular part of India. So before we knew it, Jack had metamorphosed into Babu, the giant into an ogre and the beanstalk into a Mango tree.

With our semi Hindi panto decided on and all amendments made, all that was required was to cast. When looking around the Mango House, some of the roles seemed obvious. Whilst I would dearly love to see matt dressed in drag, being a mean, bad tempered ogre seemed like the natural choice. Besides, the ogres wife could only ever be played by Rob!

Another role was for a dodgy, drunken, scoundrel who sold the magic beans, and slowly all eyes drifted onto Steve. In the few rehearsals we have had so far, he plays a convincing character.

Jack had aspirations to play the lead role and lets face it, he qualified by sharing the same name, at least. He has since been talking to his agent in London (and will not let you take his photograph without written consent from the them!)

Charity Cow Waiting for Actors... A tremendous amount of effort has been made by everyone so far, none more than Heena, playing a convincing yet giggly market trader. She has made a fantastic cow costume for the Dynamic Duo ‘Lizzy and Steph’. who are trying to translate ‘Moo’ from English to Hindi as we speak!

With the recent departure, of the, ‘A is for Apple, Barbara’, Anna has bravely stepped in to take on the role of Babu’s mum. She has shown particular enthusiasm when she gives Babu a good beating and clearly rules the house with an iron fist, so far we are yet to hear Sangee, (played by Paulina) speak. That could be sibling rivalry though!

The pantomime really has opened our eyes to many of the Mango Houses secret talents. None more so than the angelic voice of Mareike, whose rendition of Jingle Bells will bring a tear to the eye of the most hardnosed scrooges amongst us. Rumour has it, that Matt has even been found sobbing in the shed, leaning against his shovel after rehearsals.

You may remember, in the performance 2 years ago, one of the cornerstones of the Mango House, Ali, played the prince. In keeping with the royal theme, this year Ali convinced us that he could play an equally elegant Princess! With all those beautiful flowing locks, and sexy swagger he has been attracting intriguing glances from men and women alike! Be careful what you wish for Ali!

Goodness knows what newcomer Ingrid must think, after 1 week of volunteering she’s found herself pretending to be a market trader, in a pantomime, in a tree house, with a troop of cross dressing wierdos!

Just another week in the Mango house!

*Unfortunately Robert had to step down as the Ogre's wife in the charity panto due to illness. We are happy to say that Jonnie Irwin was kind enough to stand in for the role. Jonnie, the presenter of "Place in the sun" on Channel 4 and the up coming BBC TV Series "To buy or not to buy" will undoubtedly fill the Ogre's wife's shoes and provide a stunning performance.

Slum Dog Millionaire

One of our supporters visited the slums in Bombay and now has a fantastic claim to fame. He was lucky enough to meet up with child stars from the blockbuster film "Slum Dog Millionaire". Martyn was even given a signed copy of Rubina Ali's (Latika) book "Slumgirl Dreaming". Below is a photo of Rubina and Martyn not far from her home in the slums of Mumbai and inset a photo of the young Jamal, Ayush Mahesh Khedekar.

The Lonely Planet

We are happy to know that Children Walking Tall is mentioned in the latest Lonely Planet guide. The Lonely Planet is one of the main resources for travellers worldwide and we are delighted to be included once again in their volunteering section for Goa.

Leprosy

As some of you might remember one of the children we look after was diagnosed with Leprosy in 2006, he finished his course of medicine but the disease left him with a disfigured hand which resulted in a lack of use of several fingers on his left hand.

During the next year we tried several ways to straighten his finger, but they had little effect and his condition worsened. The local health centre in Mapusa informed us about a special leprosy camp being held at The Goa Medical College (GMC) where he could receive an operation on his hand.

Later that month he was admitted into GMC for the operation and his elder sister stayed with him for the week of treatment. The operation was a great success and a plaster pot protected his lower arm and hand for several weeks and has now been removed. He has been attending physiotherapy sessions to improve movement and has been progressing well. We are happy to say he has now got around 90% movement back and is well on the way to recovery. The government has also provided financial assistance, which his family is very grateful for.

Diwali and Eid Presents

During October we celebrated Diwali and Eid with the families in the local slums by giving out a 'care package' to the families. Heena our sewing teacher with the help of other staff worked hard to prepare 60 beautiful stitched cushions to give out to each family, each care package also contained, Rice, Tea, Rava, Flour, Sugar, Oil, Beaten Rice, Dal, Toothpaste, Shampoo, Soap, Clothes washing bar and scrubber.

The children also enjoyed an extended school holiday. Some of the families went to thier native places in Karnataka and Marahastra for the celebrations. There were still lots of children in the slums so for these we treated them to several trips including Mayham lake, the beach and one of their favourites, baga water park, which the children enjoyed tremendously.

Last Month Updates

We are happy to report that the family of eight who were sleeping in the doorway of a shop have finally found a small room where they can sleep at night, the room is very cramp and has no space outside to socialise but does provide the family with a roof and walls to keep them safe at night. The room is around 9ft by 6ft and has just about enough room for them to sleep, there is a small cubicle in the corner which doubles as a shower and a sink to wash their pots. We are so happy that they have finally somewhere to live as their children deserve so much as they are truely some of th nicest children we know.

Anil's Burns

Anil has had a hard time of it recently, it started when he burnt his finger with rice water, as you can see from the picture the burn was very deep and it took a few weeks for it to heal over.

Adding to his injuries while in his village he got a second larger burn on his leg, nearly four inches long and 2 inches wide the burn was very severe and when we first saw it very infected and was weeping badly. It has been 3 weeks now of daily fresh dressings and it is looking much better, the last bit of infection was taken care of with antibiotics when we took him to see Dr Uma and we will continue to clean and treat his burn until it is fully healed. Burns are one of the most common injuries sustained by the street and slum children we look after. * Three more weeks have passed since I wrote this and Anil has continued his treatment every day and the burn has slowly closed with intensive cleaning and medication and dressing. He is now able to have it fully open and has dried out and although there's a large scar it has fully healed.

Health Camp with Dr Archana Gaonkar

We would like to say a huge thank you to Dr Archana Gaonkar and her team for putting on a health camp at the end of September, they provided their time, expertiease and also provided sponsored medicine for the children.

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Website

The Charity Website was attacked

Some of you might have become aware that our website was hijacked last month. Thankfully we sorted the problem out within 24 hours and all is back to normal, although the Bing search engine is still reporting the status inaccurately. To remove any chance of problematic code the whole website was replaced. We are sorry for any inconvieience caused.

Weather In Goa

We now have a dedicated page for the weather of Goa, we will hopefully add a little more content as time goes by to give visitors a more detailed idea of what it's like during the year in Goa.

Taxi Prices - Mapusa

We have added a new list of taxi prices from Mapusa, this is probably the most useful list for anyone who wishes to visit us - as we're based on the outskirts of Mapusa. The board can be found at the taxi rank opposite the Bombay buses in the town.

Pictures

Children's Portraits

The last few months I have unfortunately been without my camera as, but thankfully some of the volunteers have been kind enough to let me use their photos. I have chosen a few children's portraits from Anna's collection as they really capture the children's emotions well.

* ( Photos courtesy of Anna )

Return to Mayem Lake

The Diwali holidays have provided us with the opportunity to return to Mayem Lake in North Goa.. We had taken a group of the children earlier in the year and the children loved getting out onto the water in the peddle boats. The latest trip allowed us to take even more children with a total of 45 children going. The children had lunch in the park and then split into groups for the boats. The children also played in the small park at the lake and finished off the day by having fruit and then returning home. Thank you to all the volunteers and staff for their help.

* ( Photos courtesy of Matt and Lucy)

Football Club

Another treat for the children was a trip down to the local football pitch. We took some of the older children to watch a match as a prize for winning the Children Walking Tall football tournament during the previous week. While at the match the volunteers spoke to the honorary chairman of the club who offered for the children to go down and play whenever the pitch wasn't in use. So a week later we packed all the morning school children into the van and headed off to the football pitch. All the small children were kindly given footballs to use and enjoyed a fun kick around. Thank you to Anna for the fabulous photos.

* ( Photos courtesy of Anna )

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Fundraising and Donations

The Good For Goa Trust & Casa Colvale

We would like to thank The Good for Goa Trust and Casa Colvale for setting up a regular donation to put towards providing meals for the children in the slums. In the last two months they have provided around 1150 meals for the street and slum children. A special thank you goes to James Foster for his continued help.

A meal for the children

We would like to thank Subha Anand who is originally from Tamil Nadu. Subha got in contact with us and wanted to organise a meal for our children. He arranged a lovely veg thali containing, rice, dal, 3 veg, puri, pickle, rice pudding and pedeas (Indian sweets), the meal came to The Mango House in large metal containers where Subha, helped by staff and volunteers packaged and distributed the food in the slums. The children loved the food and we would like to thank him for his kindness.

Thank You to Everybody

We would like to thank everybody who has helped to raise funds and awareness over the last two months. It is becoming increasingly difficult to write details about all the donations we receive due to the amount of work involved. If you are kind enough to arrange an event for Children Walking Tall and would like your event to be included in the newsletter, then please write a small paragraph about how the event went and who was involved and send it to us by email. The newsletters are very time consuming to put together so this would be a great help to us and allow more time to be spent helping the children.

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What Can You Do?

Add a Link to our website

India Childrens Charity - Donate, Volunteer

Do you have your own website, blog or have a say on a company website? If the answer is yes then please add a link to Children Walking Tall. We have a collection of links that you can use, or if you want something designed for an offer, 5% goes to charity, or £1 for every order goes to charity then do let us know and we will make a link that fits your website.

Join our Facebook Cause

Join the Children Walking Tall Charity Cause on Facebook

Children Walking Tall now has a facebook cause we you can add to your profile on the social networking site Facebook. Unfortunately we can not link in to the donations side of the facebook application as this is restricted to charities based in the US/Canada but it does allow people to support us by joining and sharing us with others.

If you are on facebook then do join our cause and become part of the group to show your support. You will join others who also want to support us and it's a great way to keep in contact with volunteers (old and new) and to keep up to date with the charity.

Follow our Charity Blog

Children Walking Tall now has a shiny new blog, it was started a few months ago, but we kept it quiet to make sure it was sustainable. The blog is home to all the news stories before they make it into the bi-monthly newsletters. So for those who want to keep up to date with everything before it reaches the pages of the newsletter then why not follow our blog on http://childrenwalkingtall.blogspot.com/.

Spread The Word

An easy way to help Children Walking Tall is to just spread the word - just let more people know about what we do! If you've received this newsletter by email, then simply forward it to your friends; otherwise send a link to our website, as this and our older newsletters are always available on our website www.ChildrenWalkingTall.com

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And Finally...

Newsletter By Email

If you have received this email by mistake, or wish to change your newsletter subscription then please fill in the online form on our website ( www.ChildrenWalkingTall.com/Newsletters.htm ).

Many Thanks from everyone at Children Walking Tall.

Contact Us

Children Walking Tall
'The Mango House'
H.No 148/3
Near Vrundavan Hospital
Karaswada, Mapusa
Bardez, Goa

Web : www.ChildrenWalkingTall.com
Tel : (0091) 9822 124 802