Sponsorship
Many Volontariat programs involve the preparation of food: the midday meals for the sponsored children,
all meals for children in the crèches and kindergartens, including those of OM Shanti, all meals for aged people of Amaidhi & Thendral Illam, the meals of the elderly living alone at Oupalam and Dubraypeth, the meals of the apprentices, the employees of Volontariat, the foreign visitors and the invitees. The food is also cooked for the boys of Souriya Home. The vegetables and groceries are daily carried to the farm for the children of Nila Illam and their foster mothers.
All this adds up to the equivalent of eight hundred meals per day. In addition, snacks and milk are distributed to children before the evening classes start and there are always special preparations for celebrations.
When she had the opportunity,
Madeleine made a centralized kitchen in the center Selvanilayam. This modern kitchen, opened in 2001, with burners and gas cookers powered by central steam to cook the daily rice, replaced the old fire-wood stoves and, even after 10 years of daily use, still is one of the most modern in Pondicherry.
One In:charge and three experienced women manage the kitchen, plan the menus and prepare the meals with other women from Uppalam and two men, around ten people in all. A storekeeper is in charge of handing out vegetables, fruit, groceries, milk, meat and fish and maintains the stock register.
Special attention is given to provide the children with a balanced diet. The type of food varies every day: carrot or beetroot salads, a main dish of rice or pasta, vegetables or fish, meat, eggs, and a fruit or a sweet for dessert. Protein supplements are added regularly with Spirulina which is locally produced at Touttipakkam farm since early 2009.
The evening classes are an important service to the sponsored children because it supports the instruction received at school and helps children who live in huts, often without light and with noisy relatives or neighbors, to complete their lessons and homework. So Volontariat employs part time teachers, coming from various institutions. These teachers are selected from the applicants, for their competence and their understanding of child psychology, some of them are ex-sponsored students of Volontariat.
At the center Sakthi Vihar, around 700 children benefit from this programme every evening. For this large number of children to be accommodated, the classes are conducted in two batches: the younger children are held from evening 5.00 P.M. until 6.15 P.M. and the older ones come from 6.15 to 8 P.M. Every one receives a glass of hot milk and a snack before starting the class. Then they go to their respective classes, where one of 17 teachers recruited for this purpose is ready for them.
It is mostly a tutoring programme, but is also an occasion when they gather in the schoolyard or in the classroom, to be open to the world, to think and to question.
At Dubraypeth, many families whose children are sponsored by Volontariat are living. It is difficult for many of them to go to Sakthi Vihar to attend the evening classes and to come back home at night. So as there is a number of these children on that case, Volontariat opened a place at the first floor of the main building of Atelier Shanti, empty at that time. Two classes are run with the corresponding teachers, living themselves in this area. All children receive a glass of milk and a snack before the class starts.
Volontariat intends to open such delocalized places when in need and if a proper place exists. Otherwise, private tuitions are given to children isolated in area far from our centers.
Many of the sponsored children cannot attend the evening classes of Volontariat because the schools where they are studying are running their own compulsory evening classes.
The final examination of secondary school may be passed, with only very basic notions of spoken or written English. This weakness, too often, leaves the door closed to higher education, computer studies and the possibility of going out of Tamil Nadu.
Volontariat tries to complete the education of the older children, with courses in English, given by qualified teachers or by English-speaking volunteers.
