This programme is the most challenging part of AWARE's work. Here, the challenge is not only financial but also addresses other problems specific to socioeconomic conditions (e.g. children of migrant families need to be retained in their villages)



Since 1997, AWARE has supported over 3,000 children with an average annual cost of £55,000. 

• Under the Paras Project at Surat, the effort is to educate/rehabilitate the children of Commercial Sex Workers and HIV+ parents.  Currently, 309 children study from home and receive financial or material support and seven children are placed at various Ashram Schools (rural residential schools run on Gandhi's principles of primary education).  Thus, 316 such children are associated with the organisation. 

• Thirty five children also attend the Education Support Centre at Variavi Bazar in Surat.  This includes a 14-year old girl who twice underwent open heart surgery before the age of 12.  She was disheartened after the second operation and gave up school.  However, Swapath encouraged and counselled her and her family to continue her studies.  Her case was presented to the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) requesting the education department not to detain her in class 7 on health grounds. 

    This group of children also includes the three sisters of a migrant weaver's family who attended our                     Education support Centre at Surat even when they did not attend school.  By our efforts and the interest               generated by the centre, two of them resumed school.

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   There is also a boy with learning difficulties, who likes to attend our centre as he finds it comfortable to be           with other children, mostly younger than him, who understand him and do not mind his slow learning                   abilities
 

• In a remote, hilly village in The Dangs district, 50 children of families migrating for work outside the district for 8 to 9 months are taken care of at a seasonal hostel in the village itself. The children are provided with shelter, food, medicine and other educational requirements.  Almost no capital expenditure is incurred in the project as AWARE prefer to hire the empty homes of the migrant families, as required, and local villagers are hired to take care of and cook for the children. This internalization of resources increases the stake of the villagers in the hostel and makes them responsible owners of the project.  In an area with peculiar socio-cultural contexts, this seems to be an appropriate option compared to hiring outsiders for the work. 

   The children are happy as they live in the same village with known friends and families, they get good and        adequate food, a school they are familiar with in an environment that is familiar to them. Their mirthful smiles,    their vibrant playing, singing and dancing and their refusal to migrate with their parents are evidence of their      approval of the hostel.



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