Summary of activities : April 2010 to March 2011

VMF COMPLETES THREE YEARS

Awareness talk at STES site, Pune

In 2010-2011, VMF was able to reach out to 40 sites all over India as against 14 sites in the previous year and 10 sites in 2008-2009.

To ensure good health of workers and their families, awareness programmes on hygiene-related health issues were arranged. These interactive sessions were conducted by VMF staff on 13 sites in Baddi, Chennai, Coimbatore, Goa, Ludhiana and Pune. At some sites in Pune, the staff was joined by PMC doctors or the visiting doctors on site. In all 1,910 workers participated in these programmes.

Mr. Moorthy - Mentor

VMF had started providing mid-day meals to children from January 2010. In the beginning there were only 60 children from 2 sites enjoying the meals. As of 31st March, 2011, 350 children from 9 sites were benefiting from this scheme.

Street Play at Windermere site, Pune

AIDS awareness programmes were held at Ruby Tower and Kshitij, two sites in Mumbai. These programmes were conducted with the help of Mumbai Districts AIDS Control Society.

Street plays were organized for workers at 13 sites in Maharashtra. These plays depicted how addictions like tobacco, alcohol, ‘gutka’, prostitution, etc. adversely affected the workers’ health and family. 2,165 workers watched these plays which were followed by discussions.

259 children at 7 sites in Pune were immunized. Vitamins, Iron supplements and some first aid material was procured from Pune Municipal Corporation and distributed on sites in Pandharpur, Pune and Solapur.

Education:

Education has always been VMF’s priority. VMF ensures that children residing in the labour camps not only go to crèche on site, but also get enrolled in mainstream schools. Presently, there are 106 children attending mainstream schools from sites in Pune, Nashik and Solapur. To keep children and their parents motivated to continue formal education, VMF organized an Annual Day Programme on 21^st August, 2010. As of 31^st March, 2011, there were 12 creches (child development centres) in Maharashtra, Goa and Tamil Nadu.


Classroom at SPSPM, Solapur crèche (left)	A child being felicitated by the special guest Sandeep Mahadik, as the chief guest P.C. Kavate applauds

To enable the children of the migrant construction workers to have uninterrupted education, VMF started education sponsorship programme in June 2009. The programme has had a good response from workers. 15 children are residing in hostels today. These children are placed in hostels of Maher, Seva Sadan and Janseva Foundation.

Special thanks to those who individually and jointly sponsored 6 of these children:

Gulvinder Singh with children at Janseva Foundation

Children	(Jointly)
Mr. Prashant Padgaonkar	Ms. Namrata Malvade
Ms. Manjula Patwa	Ms. Prajakta Patil
Mr. Prakash Ramkrishna	Ms. Megha Puranik
Mr. Bhanu Shah	Ms. Subhangini Waghmare
Mr. Chandresh Shah

External Beneficiaries

	From June 2010, VMF has started the HIGHER EDUCATION SCHOLARSHIP LOAN PROGRAMME. Under this programme, deserving students are provided with a scholarship loan for their graduation studies. This year VMF has offered loan to two students, Bhima Marol, first year civil engineering student and Samidha Pawar studying in 3^rd year BMAS.
	A workshop on “self-expression through art and games” was conducted for Standard 10^th girls of St. Felix School.

Employee Welfare

	Provided Financial and moral support for medical care in deserving cases.
	Provided Scholarship for children of deceased employees.

For The Future

	Find sponsors to educate more children.
	Convince more parents to enrol their children in hostels for uninterrupted education.
	Tie-up with Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship Development and Research (IIEDR) to provide technical training to site workers for construction industry.
	Training site staff for maintaining labour camps.

Donars Who Have Supported VMF

VMF thanks all those who have supported by way of donations in cash and in kind.

Mr. Jude B.	Ms. Ranjan Patwa
Ms. Sadhana Dabak	Mr. D. Santhanam
Ms. Nida Deshpande	Mr. Anand Saraf
Ms. Pooja Gariwala	Ms. Kusum Shah
Mr. Sharad Indulkar	Mr. Arvind Singh
Mr. Madhav Kalgaonkar	Ms. Lalitha Sundararajan
Ms. Bhavna Kapadia	Ms. Smita Tadke
Mr. Arvind Kshirsagar	Mr. R.M. Telang
Ms. Geeta Lulla	Mr. Shekhar Tendulkar
Mr. Swadhin Mishra	Ms. Leena Upadhye
Mr. Arvind Nayak	Mr. Siddharth Vasudevan
Ms. Kanchan Panse	Ms. Nawaz Vijayakumar
Mr. Deven Parab	Mr. Suraj Wadia
Ms. Manjula Patwa	Mr. Dileep Welhal

Staff of both Neelkanth sites A Group of Chartered Accountants in Mumbai Tara Mobile Creches