Ensuring education, providing regular meals, and offering medical care to children: these are the objectives of Fondazione l’ Albero della Vita (The Tree of Life Foundation), triggered by years of experience in the poorest areas of the world. The Foundation began working in India in 2006; The purpose of the Foundation’s presence in this populated country is to ensure children's right to education through a distance support scheme called SAD.
«We sought to adopt a community approach that would integrate ordinary activities of direct children's support with undertakings designed to improving the socio-economic conditions of communities» says Camilla Azzini, Desk Officer of the Asia Foundation. In concrete terms, this means increasing access for the most disadvantaged families to programs and social protection schemes provided by the Indian government. It also means upturning children's involvement in the community affairs, by turning them into key figures that promote children’s rights and spread messages opposing all forms of violence and abuse. «In the future, we will try to involve local authorities in our projects. We believe that by sharing high standards of education, care and protection, we can generate a greater impact on more children» said Camilla Azzini.
The project has involved 2,045 children so far, aged between 6 and 18 years. They all come from families who live in poverty, and are often from minority or disadvantaged social groups.
The Foundation operates in the eastern states of India, West Bengal and Assam. It works together with some local partners, all of which are non-governmental organizations: the Don Bosco Development Society Calcutta, Santa Teresa Provincial Delegation of Carmelite Fathers, Palli Unnayan Samiti Baruipur, and the Andrewspalli Center for Integrated Development and Rulal Aid.
The interventions carried out so far have been aimed at ensuring first and foremost educational opportunities, providing regular meals, and medical care. The priority is giving children a chance to become educated. «Among the several activities, the after school service is especially significant. A wide-ranging educational path is decisive to prevent dispersion: it helps to affirm the importance of education for the child as a viable and feasible alternative to labor» explains Debnarayan Bej, the Foundation regional coordinator. «Equally important are the awareness-raising meetings with the families of children at risk of dropping out. The risk derived from economic conditions caused by particular contingencies occurring within the family (a death, the birth of other children, the parents falling ill or becoming unemployed), or by the lack of consideration for the importance of education within the family core».
The project SAD, in addition to a coordinator and an assistant, makes use of some communitarian animators. Each year it bears the cost of the salary of 88 teachers, including those qualified to teach at private schools and those certified to tutor at the after school programs. Tutors play a very important role because they are the ones who are regularly in contact with the students, who are often spread across wide and distant geographic areas.
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