WHAT WE DO
ACTIVITIES / SERVICES
I : KARUNALAYA SCHOOL-HOME FOR INTELLECTUALLY CHALLENGED CHILDREN
II: STOP CHILD EXPLOITATION PROGRAM IN 65 VILLAGES
III: IMAGE : INITIATIVE FOR MARRIED ADOLESCENT GIRL EMPOWERMENT
IV: IMAGE NEXT: “NURTURING MOVEMENT OF GRILS AND YOUNG WOMEN AS AGENTS
OF CHANGE TO ASCERTAIN THEIR RIGHTS”
V : EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN THROUGH SELF HELP GROUPS
ACTIVITY I : KARUNALAYA SCHOOL-HOME FOR INTELLECTUALLY CHALLENGED CHILDREN
This program facilitated the training of children (6 - 18 years) who were neglected by
parents because they were mentally challenged and the not so literate parents
considering these children as a curse of God and so they cannot be helped. These poor
people who were struggling for their livelihood do not seek help or advice from
others. Hence the starting of this ‘Karunalaya’ school-home, first of its kind in the
whole of the District, has been a blessing to these special children. (‘Karunalaya’
means Temple of Mercy)
The hostel has facilities to accommodate 20 boys and 20 girls. At present forty
children are in Karunalaya. Besides nutritious food, health care is given to them.
The children are trained to take care of themselves in the daily living activities like
brushing, bathing, toilet training, dressing, eating and working with others.
They are provided education / functional academic skills individually according to
their ability of which some children could be mainstreamed with the regular schools in
their own area.
They are provided with training for rehabilitation in some self-supporting vocation or
employment so that when they go back to their homes they will be no longer a burden
to the family but can supplement to the family income.
They are provided with recreation and sports, are trained to compete with others and
develop their skills.
They participate in local, district, State and National level sports (Special Olympics)
and cultural events and win prizes.
It is very costly to train up and help a child who is mentally challenged
Unlike normal schools these children need special individual attention and care to
train them in just simple daily living skills like brushing teeth, toilet raining, dressing,
eating and so on. For this, there need to be a House Mother and committed Care
Takers. For functional academic training in the school there is a need for trained
Teachers in Special Education and a Helper for every 7 children. As mentally
challenged children have health complications constant health care is a must besides
nutritious food.
Every Rupee/Dollar counts - 100% of your donations go towards empowering and
giving these children a productive life.
There are many activities that are taken to help these children
- Life skill training
- Functional Academic training
- Vocational training
- Out door activities- sports and picnics.
ACTIVITY II: STOP CHILD EXPLOITATION PROGRAM IN 65 VILLAGES
The third major activity of PMSR is a new initiative focusing on the issue of child
exploitation in a wider context by including all the children who are forced into child
exploitation by others in 65 target villages in our District.
Child exploitation in different forms is rampant in Chamrajnagar District which is a
very backward district.
While child labor and child marriage are the two major visible exploitations that are
faced in this District, child abuse is mostly invisible and it happens within and outside
the house of the child.
Parents due to acute poverty send their school going children for daily work so that
they could supplement to the family income. In our area children are employed for
construction work, for silk reeling, for stone and sand quarrying, in workshops and in
brick kilns or as domestic servants.
They work for almost ten hours a day but paid by their employers less than what an
adult is paid for the same work.
Child marriage is part of the tradition for some caste groups and they are still
encouraging this practice in spite of Government enacting a law to prevent child
marriage. Children are sexually abused.
In short, all these rob the unfortunate children their childhood.
Campaigns, rallies and awareness programs on child rights and child protection are carried
out in the villages. In these villages, we have appointed Child Protection Committees
consisting of village leaders, teachers of the local Government kindergarten schools,
members of the Women Self Help Groups and youth volunteers. We had also initiated
Children’s Clubs in few villages who closely monitor incidents of child abuse and exploitaion
and inform our staff. During the past two years, we had made a beginning in liberating
these unfortunate children from child labour and child marriage. Many child marriages have
been stopped with the help of the District Child Protection Office. Over 200 children were
released from child labor by convincing their parents who had forced their children to work
and with the help of the Government officials. Now they are rehabilitated and being
admitted to schools or arrangements are made for vocational training so that they could
start working after they complete 18 years. More than 300 children are out of school and
working as child labourers and are yet to be released but it is not that easy as parents as
well as employees do not want them to stop working. If child sponsorship in the form of
scholarships are made available to these families there is a god chance of getting these
children readmitted in schools. As a rule Child Protection Policy has to be adopted by every
educational institution. Our staff follow this up with local educational institutions.
ACTIVITY III: IMAGE: INITIATIVE FOR MARRIED ADOLESCENT GIRL EMPOWERMENT
Karnataka accounts for 23.2 percent of child marriages in the Country. The practice is prevalent
in almost all districts according to the Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights.
Though the state has a strong framework of policies to ensure the safety and rights of girl child,
in practical terms, it has not adhered rigorously. The practice is mostly found in socially and
economically disadvantaged communities in rural areas. Poverty, migration, illiteracy, tradition,
family pressure and fear of sexual violence are the major causes of early marriages.
Initiatives for Married Adolescent Girls’ Empowerment (IMAGE), is the project specifically
designed to empower married adolescent girls, who are one of the unattended children in society.
They are neither treated as children nor an adult, no one cares for their rights, security and opportunities.
This project is presently implemented in 5 districts of Karnataka with the objective of providing, health,
education, skill development, sexual and reproductive health and rights(SRHR), social protection and
protection from gender-based violence.
Our operational area
The project is implemented by a consortium formed with 6 civil society organisations in 5 districts of Karnataka,
with the financial and technical support of Terre des Hommes – Netherlands (TdH-NL). It covers identified
3,077 girls who were married before the age of 18 years with the overall objective of ‘Empowering Early Married
Girls (EMGs) towards Social and Economic Independence by collectively Involving Government, CSOs, and
Community to be responsible in addressing the needs towards sustainability’.
PMSR covers 630 identified EMGs from 43 villages under 24 Panchayats of 3 Blocks (Kollegal, Yelandur and Hanur)
in Chamarajanagar District. Child marriage is still widely practiced by few of the most backward communities. Economic
hardship is one of the main reasons for parents getting their adolescent girl children married soon after they attain
puberty, thereby depriving these girls of their school education. Being the southernmost District of Karnataka,
Chairmanager District borders the States of Tamilnadu and Kerala, divided by the Western Ghats. Having
a large percentage of forest cover, 12 % of the district population is comprised of forest dwelling tribals like
the Soligas and Betta Kurubas who also practice child marriage. Hence, of the 630 EMGs, 151 belong to the Soliga Tribe.
The specific project objectives are:
-
To facilitate available health and social security services to early married girls and prevent gender-based violence & adolescent pregnancy.
2. To facilitate increased access for early married girls to secondary education and job-oriented vocational training.
What do we do?
We are working in five areas of project interventions with Early Married Girls (EMGs)
1. Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) – The project creates awareness to EMGs on reproductive health, menstrual hygiene, avoiding early union and help them to postpone their pregnancy and spacing between the pregnancy.
2. Education – EMGs who are interested to continue their formal education are either re-enrolled in the schools or supported to write their exams privately. Tutorial support and education materials are provided to them from the project. Opportunities created for future livelihood by providing job Oriented Vocational training to interested EMGs.
3. Health and Nutrition – The project creates health awareness to EMGs and vulnerable girls, also provides health services and referrals to EMGs
4. Gender-based violence (GBV) – The project supports the EMGs against Gender-Based and Domestic violence by creating legal awareness and referral services. It also works with the spouses and family members of EMGs for behavioral change and norms .
5. Social protection – Advocating with the Government and other stakeholders to ensure access of various welfare schemes and entitlements available for the married women. Support to EMGs to access general civic IDs and
ACTIVITY IV: IMAGE NEXT: “Nurturing Movement of Girls and Young Women as Agents of
Change to Ascertain their Rights”
Project Goal : To empower girls and young women, who are victims and survivors of early child marriage to improve their access to rights, opportunities, and services in Karnataka, India.
Operations and scale: In 5 years, the project will work among 15000 EMGs and survivors from 15 districts across Karnataka.
Key results
-At least 15,000 target girls and women are enrolled/ onboarded in the movement by end of the project
- At least 100 change agents (representatives of target girls and young women) capacities are build to self-advocate effectively and to shape the broader dialogue around their rights and access to services
- At least 100 personnel from Government - education, health, women & child development, social welfare, law enforcement, and judiciary sensitized on the representation and respond to the voice of these women in Karnataka
- At least 50 Civil Society Organisations are sensitized and engaged in Movement building
Geographic location
At present through the IMAGE project, our presence is in 5 districts of Karnataka (Bidar, Bagalkote, Belagavi, Chamarajanagar and Chikbelapura). These 5 districts will be the regional movement unit, they will cover another 10 districts adjacent to them where the child marriage is high. It works through a consortium.
To nurture the movement, PMSR is covering 2 more districts namely Mysore and Mandya along with the Chamarajanagar District. The details of the target locations are:
Details of the selected EMGs and Survivors from each District:
About the Consortium
It is a consortium of 7 organizations. Where Vidyaniketan (Lead of Consortium, Secretariat of proposed movement) and 4 NGO partners are REACH in Bagalkot district, SEVAK in Belgaum district, PMSR in Chamarajanagar district and ARPANAM TRUST in Chikballapur district. CRT is the Advocacy and Communications Resource partner and Terre des Hommes Netherlands is the Co-funding and technical assistance partner. The major funding is being done by the Comic Relief Fund(CRF), UK.
Project Interventions across five thematic areas
We are working on five areas of project interventions with EMGs and Survivors, which are as follows
A. Movement building and strengthening: The project builds a strong and growing movement by identifying and organizing EMGs and young women married before 18 years through a membership drive and strengthen them on child marriage issues.
B. Norms and Behaviour Changes at Family and Society level: Awareness and sensitization to families of target population on gender, SRHR, health and nutrition of girls and young women through the campaigns and meetings.
C. Leadership development and capacity building: Identify and strengthen selected girls and women leaders as change agents to spearhead the movement
D. Engagement with Government and other stakeholders: Interface between girls & young women and Government & other stakeholders with the active participation of Government and CSOs on issues that are being strategic to the project.
E. Evidence gathering and communication strategies for influencing Government, community and other stakeholders: Studies to gather pieces of evidence around the issues faced by the target population, their needs, and demands, and landscape of existing interventions
About Our Funding Partners for IMAGE and IMAGE Next activities:
Comic Relief Fund
Comic Relief Fund is a major charity based in the UK, with a vision of a just world, free from poverty.
TdH-NL (Terre des Hommes Netherlands)
Terre des hommes Netherlands (TdH-NL) works against child exploitation, removes children from exploitative situations and ensures these children can develop themselves in a safe environment. It is an international non-governmental organization that works to create a world free of child exploitation. Since 1965 it has protected tens of millions of children from violence, child labour, trafficking, sexual exploitation, malnutrition, and other challenges. In India, TdH-NL focuses on preventing worst forms of child labour, child trafficking and migration, sexual exploitation of Children and child abuse.
ACTIVITY V : Empowerment of women through Self Help Groups:
The role of women and the need to empower them are central to human development
program including poverty alleviation. Economic empowerment results in women’s
ability to influence or make decisions, increased self-confidence, better status and role in
the household. PMSR in the past 25 years has organized poor women into Self Help
Groups in Kollegal and Yellandur Taluks of Chamrajnagar District in Karnataka and has
nurtured them to empower themselves both economically and socially. Women in India
are victims of a multiple socio-economic and cultural factors. By giving them awareness
on the socio-cultural and economic structures which keep women under subjugation,
empowering them to challenge the hurdles that stand in the way of their attaining self-
dignity has yielded positive results in the villages. Women are slowly regaining
confidence and begin to ascertain their rightful place in the family household and in the
society. Capacity building activities has also helped the women self-help groups to have
access to loans and grants from Government schemes and banks and to maintain accounts
in the banks. Currently 79 SHGs are very active and functioning well. Members of the
SHGs gets loans through internal lending within the respective Groups and use them for
launching income generation activities.
These SHGs are also local voluntary organizations concerned about the local socio-
economic and political issues. Women’s empowerment has helped them to take up local
issues such as education of children with disabilities, child labour, child abuse, child
marriage and violence against women and girl children. They also have close contact
with the local Anganwadi (kindergarten) workers and ASHA workers and monitor the
health of the pregnant women and lactating mothers in their area.
PMSR continues to build the capacities of SHG members and giving awareness education
so that ultimately SHGs will be a channel of social transformation.