Supported Projects

A Holi Message from Sri Ravi Rai

Written by Ravi Rai, COME International
Dear brothers and sisters from Bijhar, Hope you all had a great holi. This was the second Holi for children staying at Apana Ghar. Holi was celebrated on 4 March here. Last day in school before holi, the results of mid term exams have to be declared. This is their first year in a main stream school. Students at Apna Ghar are dressing up in the morning. There is a meaningful silence all over. Everyone looks tense as if all of us have taken exams. What if they fail? Shall I have to defend before the school authorities? The whole day our eyes fixed at the gate. About 4 pm we saw Shubham and Sahid came rushing in with with a shield and a paper in their hand. Other children were running behind them. Wow! They came with flying colours. Shahid (92.8%), Vinod(80.4%), Sanjay(80.75%), Shubham(81.5%) and Ashmit(71.2%) were given Gaurav Patra (appreciation letter) and a shield. Rest of the children scored above 60% except Rohit (46.5%).
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From illiteracy to e-literacy

Written by Basant & Prakash Hetamsaria

BIJHAR Helps Bridge Digital Divide

BIJHAR worked in close partnership with Jharkhand Vikas Nyas, a Ramgarh based NGO to provide a computer training facility provided to the students of Harihar Sahoo Girls High School, Gola, in Hazaribag district , Jharkhand.

Gola is a rural block level small town, about 25 kms. from Ramgarh Cantt.This is an agricultural area and has very few other means of employment. People are peasants and poor. A good part of the population is tribal.Harihar Sahoo Girls High School is the only high school for girls in Gola block and has nearly 600 girl students. Despite being high school students, The girl students had no exposure to computers as the school did not have computer education facilities. There was no hope of any such facility being made available to them by the management in the near future, due to meagre revenues. The education they were getting was obviously inadequate in the
light of the need of being computer literate to progress and to move ahead in life in the modern world.

Rag Pickers Project

Written by Prakash & Basant Hetamsaria

"In this part of India, the temperature has already come down to 16 degrees Celsius. Soon it will be around, 6 deg. Celsius, forcing people to be confined to the warmth of woolens in their bed till late morning. Even the Sun does not dare to challenge the fury of early morning cold and delays its arrival. But, the biting cold and the darkness before dawn does not deter some little brave hearts from coming out on the roads to take on the struggle of life for yet another day.
Friends we are talking about RAG PICKERS, aged 4 to 12 years. They start their day at around 5.00. AM, barely protected from the cold. They do this everyday, without fail, throughout the year, to earn anything between Rs. 10 to 50, so as to get a meal at the end of the day for themselves and probably for their parents and siblings. Forget education, in this process they miss out their childhood. Doing this, they are threatened with disease, crime, abuse, etc. This experience makes them a threat to the society, when they are grown up."

The lines above come from Mr Basant Hetamsaria, founder of Jhrakhand Vikas Nyas (JVN).One cannot but get moved after reading these lines. They formed part of an appeal to BIJHAR an year back. Basant wanted to start a project to help these poor rag picking children. BIJHAR decided to support JVN in its efforts unanimously.