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WIRRAL’S DAISY & JAKE NURSERY
RAISE £9,000 FOR INDIAN STREET CHILDREN
A delegation from Daisy & Jake nurseries have just
returned from a visit to Northern Goa where they
sponsor a Day Care Centre that educates children living
in slums.
The children, aged 2 – 6, whose normal life involves being sent
out to work or beg are condemned to a life on the street and
the vicious cycle of poverty because they have no chance of
reaching the required level of education to qualify for a place
at primary school.
For ten years, the chain of Wirral nurseries have raised money
to run their own Day Centre via a charity called Tender Heart.
Their Goan centre costs just £2,000 a year to run and the
children and families from their six Wirral nurseries undertook
a variety of fundraising activities all year.
On their trip, the team decided to take their own expertise to
India to help the charity in a more practical way. Daisy and Jake
staff members funded their own travel and expenses for the trip
and spent the week sharing teaching techniques, lesson ideas
and their general expertise with the centre’s teachers to develop
a level of variety, interactivity and diversity to the curriculum.
The Tender Heart Foundation offers help and hope to Indian
street children by providing basic Early Years education that
could lead to a primary school place at the age of 6. These
children would otherwise remain uneducated and face a
lifetime of continued poverty and disadvantage. The foundation
builds relationships with local families as parents often need
persuading to send their children to the day centre to help end
the cycle of child poverty through education, while also helping
with essentials like food and shelter for children who would
otherwise go without.
She said: “I was completely in awe of the wonderful work
the foundation was doing to offer these children a future.
Their families are some of the poorest in India and a lack of
education condemns successive generations to a life of poverty.
What I saw there made me even more determined to help and
that is why we returned this year to offer practical support as
early year’s educators”
The foundation has helped more then 900 children attain
primary school places over the last ten years and has recently
opened four additional Centres to help even more. In addition
to their Early Year’s Centres the foundation also provide places
at embroidery and tailoring schools where adolescent girls
and older women can learn the skills and get access to sewing
machines that will enable them to earn a living and keep
them off the streets. A new tailoring centre is to be opened
shortly and the £9,000 raised by Daisy & Jake staff, parents and
children has been ring fenced to cover the running costs for
the next 3 years. Fundraising plans have already begun for next
year when another trip is planned.
Lisa said “We are so proud to have raised this money to help
the Tender Heart Foundation with the work they do. We also
regularly raise funds for Radio City Cash for Kids and worry
that sometimes we ask too much of our families, but they all
step up to the plate and without their participation along with
local businesses it would not have been possible.
“I would like to offer my personal thanks to everyone who
helped. The Tender Heart Day Centres offer street children
the chance to escape a lifetime of poverty through early year’s
education and adolescent training for teenage girls. As a
business involved in childcare at home it is fitting that Daisy
& Jake can offer our help to children living in such desperate
conditions abroad”
Managing Director Lisa Collins was overwhelmed by the levels
of poverty and the adverse living conditions the children faced.
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