Latest NGO News

NGO, corporate come together to raise awareness

GURGAON: In a city where 47 laborers have lost their lives due to safety norm violations in the last two years according to official records, the need for stringent laws and higher awareness is obvious.

According to some non-governmental agencies, the actual number of laborer deaths due to such negligence could be several times higher. City-based NGO Kutumb Foundation emphasizes on the need of a more assertive and aware workforce.

The NGO organized an evening show titled 'Josh-e-Umang' on Friday to raise awareness among construction workers in the city. The event was organized at one of the Tata Housing construction sites in Ulhawas Village, Sector 59.

"This is an educational program for the laborers and their families. Through street-plays and songs we highlight the sensitive issues like child labor, education and labor-safety"" said Kapil Pandey of Kutumb Foundation.

The one of its kind event was attended by more than 800 laborers and their families. One of the organizers, Vaibhav Kumar Shivhare of Tata Housing, said in light of the recent accidents at construction sites, it was a social responsibility of the developers to raise awareness.

"The principle responsibility of labor safety lies on the developers and employers. While the contractors have an immediate responsibility, the developers also need to be a part of the whole process," said Shivhare.

He added that one way to improve safety was making the laborers understand their rights. "We are planning to hold such events for laborers working on our construction sites all over the country."

Construction activity has been on the rise in Gurgaon, but so have been the safety-related accidents. Members of Kutumb said that laborer accidents are grossly neglected and even labor laws need an overhaul.

"Our labor laws are such that there are no provisions for labor welfare or welfare for the workers' families," said Nandini, a member of Kutumb.

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Orphan home

Guwahati, Dec. 28: The four-year-old HIV-positive girl who was abandoned by her family after her parents died will be shifted to Snehneer, a care home for HIV-positive children in Calcutta, next month.

The NGO Bhoruka Public Welfare Trust that runs Snehneer is now taking care of the girl at its community centre at Beharbari here.

The Assam State AIDS Control Society had agreed to send the girl to the care centre so that she could receive proper care and treatment according to the guidelines of the National AIDS Control Organisation.

“The girl’s health has improved a lot and she will be shifted to our 25-bed home in Calcutta by the end of January, as we do not have space there at present. We had sought permission from the Assam State AIDS Control Society and they have agreed,” said Ratul Kalita, the project co-ordinator of the NGO here.

The girl was brought to the centre on December 11 by a local NGO, which had found her in Nalbari.

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Absent MLA makes NGO look elsewhere

PANCHKULA: A political leader in a democracy needs to remember he is like the engine of a train. If he is not there, someone else will automatically take his place. That was the lesson for Panchkula MLA DK Bansal when he did not turn up for an NGO's event to donate old and used clothes to the needy on Monday afternoon in Sector 9. The NGO officials decided that they would get four of the clothes' recipients to inaugurate the event instead.

The NGO's president, Rohit Sharma, said they had also called the MLA's brother Surinder Bansal to ask about him. ''The programme was to start at 1pm. We waited for Bansal till 2pm and when he didn't come, we invited four needy people to open the programme,'' he added.

The MLA's brother said the NGO had not been provided an appointment for the function. He added that as he was the president of the Sector-9's market association, the organizers had come to seek his permission to use the space there.

He stated, ''The organizers wanted that the MLA should be the chief guest at the programme, but I informed them that he would only come if he did not have prior commitments. As he was out of town on Monday, the MLA could not attend the event. I don't know why the organizers are levelling these allegations in spite of their knowing the situation.''

MLA DK Bansal maintained he was not aware that such a programme was being organized. The NGO members are lying, he said. ''For any event, organizers take appointments 3-4 days before it, but NGO members never contacted me or any of my party's members,'' said Bansal. He also said that at the time of the function, he was out of town.

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Golibar SRA project full of lacunae: NGO survey

Any project carried out on slums under the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) requires the consent of at least 70% local residents. However, as per a survey carried out by Ghar Bachao Andolan, a Non-Government Organisation (NGO)- the Golibar redevelopment project carried out by Shivalik ventures- one of the oldest and probably biggest SRA project at Khar (East) has failed to keep up to this condition.

According to Simprit Singh of the Ghar Bachao Andolan, only 2362 occupants have been served an eviction notice by the district collector’s office. “The numbers clearly show that close to 48% of the residents have not given the consent for redevelopment,” Simprit Singh told DNA. He further added that the report will be submitted to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SRA on Tuesday.

Refuting his allegations, Ramakant Jadhav, director of Shivalik ventures claimed that his company had the consent of close to 90% residents. “We have been following all the legal proceedings in the project since the time we got the Letter Of Intent (LoI) in 2006. However, there have been a number of instances of residents first giving us consents and then going back on their word. Medha Patkar’s NGO (Ghar Bachao Andolan) has tried to malign our companies image,” said Jadhav.

Simprit Singh, however, rubbished all the claims made by the developer.

“If the developer is so firm about his claims on the consent, he should answer some questions such as why are the societies not having a meeting every three months, which is mandatory for a SRA society,” questioned Simprit Singh.

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Aid groups in Afghanistan question U.S. claim of Taliban setbacks

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Citing evidence that Taliban insurgents have expanded their reach across Afghanistan, aid groups and security analysts in the country are challenging as misleading the Obama administration's recent claim that insurgents now control less territory than they did a year ago.

"Absolutely, without any reservation, it is our opinion that the situation is a lot more insecure this year than it was last year," said Nic Lee, the director of the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, an independent organization that analyzes security dangers for aid groups.

"We don't see COIN has had any impact on the five-year trajectory," he said, referring to the counterinsurgency strategy that U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, has championed.

While U.S.-led forces have driven insurgents out of their strongholds in southern Afghanistan, Taliban advances in the rest of the country may have offset those gains, a cross section of year-end estimates suggests.

Insurgent attacks have jumped at least 66 percent this year, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office.

Security analysts say that Taliban shadow governors still exert control in all but one of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.

A recent United Nations security estimate of the risks that U.N. personnel face as they travel around Afghanistan concluded that security was deteriorating in growing pockets across the country.

In one example, the U.N.'s World Food Program no longer sends its trucks along the road that links Kabul to Bamiyan, one of the country's safest regions, because a bomb killed a U.N. contract driver and three police escorts on the route in July.

"Our ability to use these routes has decreased," said Challiss McDonough, a Kabul-based spokeswoman for the international food program. "There are fewer places where we have completely unimpeded access."

A 20 percent increase in civilian casualties in 2010 and the highest coalition death toll in nine years of war add to the belief in Afghanistan that insecurity is growing, not declining.

"I can't understand how they can say it is more secure than last year," said Hashim Mayar, the acting director of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an umbrella group that represents more than 100 Afghan and international aid groups working in Afghanistan. "Insecurity has extended to some parts of the county that were relatively safe last year."

President Barack Obama offered the assessment of diminished Taliban control on Dec. 3 during a surprise visit to the country.

"Today we can be proud that there are fewer areas under Taliban control, and more Afghans have a chance to build a more hopeful future," Obama told U.S. troops at Bagram Airfield.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates repeated the claim two weeks later in discussing the findings of a 40-page still-secret assessment of U.S. progress in Afghanistan that was announced Dec. 16.

"As a result of the tough fight under way, the Taliban control far less territory today than they did a year ago," Gates said.

The five-page unclassified version of that assessment doesn't include the statement about territorial control, but it leaves the impression that the Taliban are on the run.

"The surge in coalition military and civilian resources ... has reduced overall Taliban influence and arrested the momentum they had achieved in recent years in key parts of the country," the unclassified version says.

In the days since its release, the White House and U.S. officials in Kabul have declined to provide specifics, saying only that the conclusion was based on a variety of measures that include the number of districts under Taliban or government control, estimates of Taliban freedom of movement and information about roadside bombs.

"There's just not a lot more we can offer without getting into classified information," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Monday in an e-mail message.

Last month, the Pentagon concluded that Afghan insurgents' "capabilities and operational reach have been qualitatively and geographically expanding."

Asked whether that assessment conflicts with the White House assertion that the Taliban control less territory, a military spokesman said that both could be true.

"You can, in fact, lose ground but be more geographically dispersed," said U.S. Rear Adm. Greg Smith, the communications director for the American-led military in Afghanistan.

Smith produced military maps that showed expanding "ink spots" of security around Afghanistan's biggest population centers, including Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif in the north and Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual capital in southern Afghanistan.

Smith argued that by focusing on protecting the country's largest population centers under the administration's counterinsurgency strategy, the U.S.-led military has contained much of the violence and is protecting a growing percentage of the country's 28 million residents, even if the Taliban are operating more widely.

In the past year, Smith said, the U.S. military has managed to reduce the number of Afghan districts that account for half of the violence from 14 to nine.

"They will expend a force to go somewhere thinking that we will follow them out of the main ... population centers," Smith said. "Well, they're mistaken. We're not going to get sucked into chasing them around the country."

Even so, Smith said the military couldn't vouch for the White House assertion that the Taliban control less territory, which he said was based on a CIA study, not a military one.

"It's not a metric that we're able to validate from an ISAF perspective," he said, referring to the International Security Assistance Force, the official name of the coalition. "Not that I disagree with it, but the agency that does that is a three-letter agency."

A former senior U.S. intelligence official who closely tracks the conflict in Afghanistan said that his own count, based on news reports, showed insurgency-related violence in at least 231 out of the country's 400 districts in November.

The former official, who agreed to discuss his findings only if he weren't identified because of the sensitivity of the topic, said the count showed the Taliban's reach expanding.

"Even in unclassified sources, it's clear that the Taliban are showing they have greater reach than ever before," he said. "I don't know if they have the staying power." But they can reach previously unaffected areas, he said, "and that means terror. That means they can punish anybody anywhere."

"There were a lot more districts in contention than there were a year ago," he said.

Recent U.N. security estimates that The Wall Street Journal obtained appeared to support that view.

The maps, which assess the safety risks for U.N. staff traveling around Afghanistan, showed security deteriorating in growing pockets across the country.

Problems from March to October of this year worsened in eight provinces and overall travel risks improved in only two, the Journal reported.

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NGO calls for tough action on tobacco control

Concrete action on tobacco control at State level is far too rare on the Chinese mainland, according to a report released by a non-governmental organization on Tuesday.

Based on the current situation, China, which is home to the world's largest smoking population, could hardly live up to the promises it made when it signed the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) initiated by the World Health Organization (WHO), said the report, Tobacco Control 2010 in China -- A Civil Society Perspective.

This is the second time the anti-smoking advocacy group Thinktank has released such a report.

Each year, 5.4 million people die of smoking-related diseases worldwide, one fifth of whom are in China. The country now has 350 million smokers on the mainland, including 180 million teenagers, WHO statistics showed.

Without effective intervention, another 100 million Chinese will die from smoking-related illness by 2050, half of them aged between 30 and 60, experts estimated.

"Despite the FCTC commitment, the central government has made little progress in implementing these rules, such as introducing a substantial action plan for tobacco control at State level and the long-awaited nationwide legislation on smoking bans in public places," said Thinktank Director Wang Ke'an.

Yang Gonghuan, head of the National Office of Tobacco Control, said that progress in reducing the number of smokers had almost stalled since China ratified FCTC in 2003.

The number of smokers on the mainland decreased by 0.45 percent annually from 2003 to 2010, only half of the rate between 1996 and 2002, she noted, citing a study to be published in January.

However, China's tobacco consumption has been rising in recent decades, from nearly 590 billion cigarettes in 1978 to roughly 2.3 trillion in 2009, statistics on the website of the China National Tobacco Corporation showed.

And cigarette production has increased by 33 percent since 2002.

As the tobacco industry reportedly generated more than 513 billion yuan ($77 billion) in taxes in 2009, accounting for 7.5 percent of total government revenues, "the bloody truth that lung cancer cases in China have jumped nearly 400 percent since 1980 shouldn't be ignored by decision-makers", said Zhi Xiuyi, head of the Lung Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Center of the Capital Medical University in Beijing.

"Over the long run, the government has to consider the human and financial cost of tobacco and begin to take substantial action against that," said Huang Jianshi, a public health expert in Beijing.

He also encouraged all stakeholders from different fields such as the law, health, and education, to stick to the "long and hard" task of tobacco control.

Despite a lack of national legislation, by 2010 more than half of China's 337 large and medium-sized cities had issued regulations to ban smoking in certain public areas, said the report.

It also repeated the call for national legislation on tobacco control.

Also, it said a new ministerial-level department should be commissioned to lead the national campaign for tobacco/smoking control, replacing the current Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which also administers China's largest tobacco producer.

Currently, China National Tobacco Corporation, the largest cigarette-maker in China and reportedly the largest worldwide, makes 95 percent of China's tobacco products and is a subsidiary of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, which is under the ministry.

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You can't buy us, chorus voters

KOPPAL: "Neither am I on sale, nor is my vote." With polls around the corner, that is a stern message the voters are sending out to politicians.

By sticking the pamphlets on the doors and walls of their houses, the voters are making it amply clear that they are not a saleable commodity and can't be wooed by money or gifts. Taking up the initiative is an NGO, which is educating voters about their right to franchise. What holds the mirror to voters' resentment is the fact that they are buying the pamphlets for Rs 2 each. So far, the NGO has reached over 35,000 houses in 20 districts in the state, of which majority are in North Karnataka. Over 1,800 houses are sporting the messages in 23 villages of Koppal district alone.

This apart, NGO volunteers are enacting street plays to educate voters on significance of their votes. "To involve and inject a sense of responsibility we are selling these stickers at Rs 2 each," said Ganapathy, state convenor of the NGO.

"We started this campaign during the GP elections from Kundapur taluk in Dakshina Kannada district and now we have spread it to 20 districts in the state," he said.

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Crazy Angrezi: Maharashtra NGO attempts to simplify Queen's language

The framed image of Saraswati nearly falls off the wall when 40 tinny voices in the village schoolroom bellow: 'Little lamb, little lamb, where do you lie? I lie in the meadow with mother close by.' Apart from their sing-song sway, the pronunciation of the ditty is spot-on—'little' isn't 'leetle' and 'mother' isn't 'murder'. Chuffed with their efforts, the two classes—standards two and four, which in the case of many village schools, share the same room-—squat back on the floor and compose themselves after having channelled the lamb.

If eight- and 10-year olds in Vajreshwari and Ganeshpuri in Thane district have a better hold on English than other village kids, credit the Learning Space Foundation. The brainchild of Nitin Orayan, this non-profit was conceived eight years ago when the advertising-marketing professional recouped to the countryside to write his first novel. Between the lines, he would tour largely adivasi villages around Ganeshpuri and when he stopped by the local schools, he learnt that many children capitulated to English, a language which, despite clever textbooks and lesson plans, could not be successfully imparted to them. They learnt by rote, attaching little meaning to words but reflexively memorizing word sequences that corresponded to questions. Failure in English eventually cost them graduation from school.

Orayan realized that the children lacked a supplementary education programme, the kind that city children have in tuitions—a reinforcement or even re-teaching of a subject. And so he began, through a series of meetings with teachers and parents, to convey the necessity of auxiliary learning and the need to give children the time to revise their lessons at home without calling them out to thresh or in to cook. He then recruited local graduates as teachers and devised a syllabus that not only simplified the school curriculum, but also calibrated it with tribal culture so that song and dance, drama and art became intuitive teaching aids.

"We try to give children a practical understanding of English over just grammar and structure. We've also been teaching them maths and may later include other subjects," says Orayan, after a batch of 80 children departs for school, breathless after a throbbing song and dance in the courtyard. "Attendance is voluntary. So far, we have 120 committed children from around four schools in the area." They come on foot, some over three km. If you count the hours from 8.15 am to 10 am at Learning Space every morning (after which they spend the afternoon at school), you'll think LS offers them a pretty large carrot. It turns out that carrot is Fun.

It's also why the teachers are in it. Nethra Dohade, a 21-year-old with a BEd, rises at 5am to catch the bus and joins the other five teachers in a pantomime of the world's lingua franca. "We turn it into a game for the kids: say, a child pulls out a flash card from a pile and names the object in English," says Madhukar Patil, a teacher. Government schools have such teaching aids too. But those flashcards are wordy, with few visuals and are often considered too valuable by teachers to pass around. The flashcards at LS have been sketched by its teachers, who go into a huddle with Orayan once a week to discuss a game plan which usually entails a reimagining of textbook lessons in ways that demand song, mime or art.

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NGO alleges school threw out HIV positive boys

An alleged case of a Gurgaon school expelling eight HIV positive students has come to light here. The Haryana Education Department has ordered an inquiry into the allegation and has directed the district education officer (DEO) to submit a report by Monday. The department has also assured that the

eight boys, currently studying in a government school Bhondsi Village, would not be subjected to any discrimination nor will they be moved from there.

Gurgaon-based NGO Drone Foundation has alleged that eight boys, aged between 3 and 12, were expelled from Delhi Public School (DPS) Maruti Kunj in August 2009.

Now the NGO said since the HIV status of the boys has become public knowledge they minors will face discrimination at the government school.

Seven HIV positive girls are also under the care of the NGO are currently studying in a local government school.

"The girls could also face similar treatment from other students," said Ankur Gupta of Drone Foundation. All the 15 children have lost their parents to the deadly disease and the NGO currently takes care of them.

Gupta alleged that DPS Maruti Kunj denied entry to the boys in August 2009 after the summer vacations on the pretext of absence of infrastructure and expertise to teach HIV infected students. The boys had taken admission in March 2009.

But school principal Rachna Pandit refuted the allegations and said the students were never admitted in DPS but had joined the afternoon classes organised for underprivileged children.

"The eight students came for 4-5 days but we told the NGO that we lacked infrastructure as well as expertise to deal with children infected with AIDS. One of the boys vomited blood and we were helpless to tackle the situation. We had never taken these children on rolls," she added.

According to the Haryana School Education Department Rules, any school which has been recognised by the state government will be open for admission to all, without any discrimination based on religion, caste, race, place of birth.

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HIV positive kids shunned, alleges NGO

NEW DELHI: After losing their parents to HIV, eight children are now on the verge of losing their right to education. The children, aged between three and 12 years, were denied admission to a prominent school in Gurgaon last year on 'medical grounds' and even the government school they have been shifted to is threatening to remove them as they are HIV positive. The NGO looking after them has alleged that the kids are treated poorly at their school and are mocked at by fellow children.

"The students call us 'bimari'. Even the teachers do not help. They often scold us and make us work," said 12-year-old Amit (name changed), who studies in Class VI at Rajkiya Vidyalaya in Bhondsi, Haryana. Another 11-year-old child, who has no memories of his parents or where he was born, says teachers discriminate against him. "They make us clean the classroom, do gardening work and often scold us. They ask us why we keep taking medicines and beat us up if we protest," he alleged, adding that he has no illness and is healthy like any other child.

According to Sunita Gupta, chairperson of NGO Drone Foundation which looks after these children, the teacher in-charge of the government-run school has warned of action if a medical certificate is not produced at the earliest. "The children feel scared to go to school. I met the principal some days ago and he threatened disciplinary action as the school was not informed about the fact that these children were HIV positive. They are being harassed," she claimed. Gupta added that the children, who were orphaned, were first registered under the education program for underprivileged children run by DPS Maruti Kunj in March 2009. "Though the school administration was supportive in the beginning, due to pressure from parents of other children and teachers, they asked us to make alternate arrangement for their education in August. One academic year was lost as all other schools had closed admissions by then," she said.

When contacted, principal of DPS Maruti Kunj Rachna Pandit said that the children were never admitted to the school. "Such children need special care. We talked to doctors and experts about their emergency needs and care, and finally decided to drop them as we do not have expertise in dealing with such cases. There have been instances when these children got hurt while playing and the bleeding did not stop," said Pandit. On the allegations of discrimination at the government school, Gurgaon's district education officer Jyoti Choudhary said she was not aware of this case. "Under the Right to Education Act, no children can be discriminated against," she said.

Dr Bir Singh, professor of the community medicine department at AIIMS who has worked with Unicef, said that HIV positive children do not require any special care in schools. "They are healthy and need regular medication, including vitamins and tablets, to prevent opportunistic infections," he said.

The NGO looking after them has alleged that the kids are treated very badly at the govt school they are studying in and are mocked by others.

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NGO to transform villages

BANGALORE: Adamya Chetana, a citybased NGO is looking at transforming a number of villages in Karnataka into economically sustainable and ecologically viable models.

Tejaswini Ananth Kumar, chairperson of the trust on Monday said, "As part of our model village development programme, we want to transform a number of villages in the state by making them economicallysustainable and ecologicallyviable on the lines of Ramatheertha village in Belgaum district, which we have already adopted as a pilot project."

The trust said it has provided gobar gas plants to 40 out of 125 houses in Ramatheertha village. "We have helped the villagers plant 6,000 fruitbearing trees in the village and its surroundings to enhance the means of livelihood. We want to replicate this experiment in as many villages as possible," she said. The NGO also provides midday meals to over two lakh school children in Karnataka and Rajasthan.

Adamya Chetana is organising a two day workshop, 'Making Bangalore Green' on December 30.

source from:news.google.com