PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS

UPDATEHELP FOUNDATIONNewsletter

Website: www.jkhf.in | Postal Address: 50, Tulsibagh, Behind Amar Singh College, Srinagar | Pin Code: 190008 | Phone: 01942310256 | Issue: October, 2015

Women Empowerment Education Rehabilitation Capacity Building Mine Risk Education

of Pratap Park

If we lose all our wealth and are only left with love, indeed we shall never be poor......”

Stephan RichardsHELPundertakesRenovationand

Beautification

Cont. on P2

HELP Foundation offered 200 sacrifices throughout Jammu and Kashmir

HELP Foundation launches Mine Risk Education (MRE) in Jammu and Kashmir

HELP Foundation Action-aid join hands in ‘Securing Rights and Sustainable Livelihoods’ in Budgam

HELP Foundation and SEWA expands women empowerment to Ganderbal, Srinagar

HELP, CHILDLINE teams up with state administration for networking and advocacy for children in the state

Rs. 30 Lacs distributed under Economic Revival Initiative (ERI) Project

2100 rural women covered under Women Self Help Group Scheme

An initiative to Revive Centuries Old Kashmir Pashmina

SAM starts boarding facility for Secondary class students

In This Issue

SEWA

It is my great p l e a s u r e to extend h e a r t f e l t

greetings to the readers of the first issue of the HELP Foundation Newsletter. A special word of appreciation, gratitude and respect is due to my colleagues on board, who have worked so tirelessly for HELP Foundation for the last 15 years while contributing to the society.It gives me immense pleasure to work in the process of Development, which leads to increase in the Happiness Index. It was our dream and goal to start this organisation 15 years ago. With a humble start in 1997, we had a dream to build an organisation that would mitigate the suffering and retain the social fibre of the people of our land who have been suffering for several decades. The experiences gained during this period have buttressed our resolve to turn our dream into reality.We at HELP Foundation believe that even a thousand mile march is taken in steps. The journey being undertaken by us may be only a few steps but it takes us that much closer to the destination.

From the Chairperson’s

Desk

HELP undertakes renovation and beautification of Pratap Park

The long-delayed renovation work had leftthe much-loved public destination out of bounds

HELP Foundation supported by Godfrey Philips India Limited (GPI) has undertaken renovation and beautification of Pratap Park in the city’s commercial hub, Lal Chowk.

The redesigning of the park would be part of the project for the beautification of Lal Chowk. Since a large portion of the park was turned into a garbage dumping site and the place was left in shambles, HELP Foundation stepped in for its infrastructural improvement and beautification plan.

This is accomplished by working with high standard architectural designs and with close coordination with the state government and department of floriculture.

The planned renovation work entails adding Modules and Plazas, pavements, a sub-surface drainage system, irrigation system, plantation module and landscaping, turfing and pump-house and kiosk, in-addition minor structural reinforcements and improvements.

“The existing pump-house will be remodelled with a capacity of rain shelter, cum Kiosk with adequate space for Drinking Water facility (installed with Community RO) ,” said, Program Manager Shadab Chisti.

What looked like a flood-ravaged landscape will be equipped with sub-surface drainage using perforated pipes and sub-merged pumps for enhanced drainage system.

“The park will be planted with the marking of dense green belts along with proper lighting system which would ensure to avoid any dark spots. In-addition modern automated irrigation system will be installed to ensure proper and adequate water supply to the groundcover landscape,” Shadab adds.

The existing pond will be converted into a ‘Lily Pond’ with the help of advanced architectural schemes fitted with proper pavements along the edges as well as across the park.

In an effort to replace spurious, machine-made Pashmina with Kashmir-patented hand-woven original shawls, HELP Foundation has hired the services of some 40 underprivileged women from Sri-nagar. The female weavers are pro-vided with relatively higher remu-neration than the general market rates, with the objective to restore their lost livelihood sources.

Despite the government ban on introducing spinning wheels and power looms, the genuine hand-made Pashmina is disappearing from the markets.

This interchange has not only brought disgrace to the Kashmir brand in the international market, but has also deprived the hundreds of local skilled artisans from their basic livelihood sources. The origi-nal hand-made Kashmir Pashmina is known for its superior quality throughout the world.

“Traders are mixing some other fabric to it so that it could survive power-loom vibrations. And this machine-made production poses a serious threat to the genuine hand-made Pashmina,” says Nazir Khan,

an expert and project coordinator, HELP Foundation.

Khan adds that, “Our Pashmina revival project is an initiative to-wards the promotion of the Kash-miri Pashmina and would benefit the forgotten and deprived women weavers of the valley.”

HELP Foundation is planning to promote Pashmina products like Pashmina shawls, stoles, scarves, sweaters and blankets from this hand-made high quality fabric.

Pashmina is a woollen cloth made from the fleece of the ‘Capra aegagrus hircus’, Himalayan moun-

tain goat, often referred to as the “Pashmina goat”.

The Pashmina obtained from Jammu and Kashmir is known as “Changthangi”, the same brand that was once presented by Napo-leon Bonaparte to his lady love, Jo-sephine.

Even though India contributes only about 1% of the world’s Pash-mina, but the Pashmina produced in India is the best in the whole world and occupies a unique po-sition. Pashmina is obtained from the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir.

An Initiative to Revive Centuries Old Kashmir Pashmina work

HELP Foundation steps in with one last effort to revive the genuine hand-made brand of Kashmir and protect the

livelihood of deprived artisan class of the valley.

HELP Foundation and SEWA expands women empowerment

to Ganderbal, Srinagar

Under the project SCRC (Sheh-jar Community Resource Centre), HELP Foundation, in partnership with SEWA has expanded its oper-ations towards the central Kashmir’s Ganderbal and Srinagar areas.

After the positive outcomes from SCRC Kupwara and Sogam, HELP Foundation and SEWA setup skill development centres at Ganderbal and Inderhama providing trainings in stitching, craft and wicker work and food processing.

Three years ago, HELP Founda-tion joined hands with SEWA (Self Employed Women’s Association) in the, frontier, backward district of Kupwara with the objective to em-power women and their skill de-velopment under the project She-hjar Community Resource Center (SCRC). HELP along with Guja-rat based SEWA began its training programmes in different trades like stitching, handicraft, handloom, so-lar and agriculture.

SCRC (Shehjar Community Re-source Centre) was setup for skill development trainings for the ladies from remote areas of the district.

“Although, Kashmir scenario (conflict, patriarchy) can never be abandoned, still our trainees went for an exposure visit to Ahmadabad couple of times to avail trainings, says Program Manager,” SCRC, Uzma Qureshi.

Soon after the inception of SCRC Salkote Kupwara, the project ex-panded towards Sogam Lolab. In ad-dition to cutting and tailoring, hand-icraft, solar, SCRC came up with a new activity of Handloom produc-tion for the women trainees there. Frequently, experts from SEWA visit the centres for monitoring and if needed, for advanced training’s as well.

Many experts from different fields of SEWA visited SCRC Centers and deliver trainings in-addition to field visits for the various awareness pro-grammes in the remote villages.

Until now, we have trained around 3000 ladies from both the centres with 650 Master Trainers. The train-ers are expert in making designer wears, Kaftans, gents wear etc.

The centres already collaborat-ed with School of Design based

in Srinagar Kashmir for latest and innovative designs. In-addition to the thousands of skilled women project has generated a sale of Rs 8, 50,000 from the products of train-ees.

Similarly, our trainers in Craft trade have been skilled with exper-tise in home furnishing, apparels, and other items like clutch pouches, purses etc.

“Recently our craft trade received an order of Apparel Work from MS. RITU KUMAR-Delhi’s renowned designer-, which costs around Rs. 2 lakh,” adds Uzma Qureshi.

Under solar trade trainees are skilled in solar marketing in remote areas of the district for which the trade has generated a sale of Rs 5, 15, 115. Furthermore, the sale from Agriculture and other activities like Food items has been Rs 19, 455 and 1745 respectively.

During these years, the centre targeted 3 exhibitions outside Kash-mir in different locations like Chen-nai Exhibition, Delhi Haat, Oz Haat Mela by Australian Embassy and Ex-hibition at Hansiba, Delhi.

HELP Foundation launches Mine Risk Education (MRE) in J&K

HELP Foundation and Handi-cap International supported by Hu-manitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO) launched the first of its kind Mine Risk Education (MRE) in the conflict region of Jammu and Kashmir. The inception of MRE component took place in Febru-ary 2015 with the base line survey called as KAP (Knowledge, Attitude and Practices) Survey. The findings of KAP acted as a backbone for the Conventional Weapons Risk Reduc-tion (CWRR) initiative been taken in Jammu and Kashmir. The four major districts under this project are Baramulla and Kupwara from Kashmir province and Rajouri and Poonch from Jammu province. KAP Survey was followed by Mine Risk Education programs in these dis-tricts which share the border with the neighboring country and most-ly witness landmine explosions and cross border shelling and affecting the day to day life of people living in these areas.

The purpose of this project is to generate awareness among the peo-ple living in these border areas close to LoC (Line of control) and be-tween fence and Actual Line of Con-trol. These areas are mostly contam-inated by landmines, laid by Indian army in order to prevent infiltration from the neighboring country. On April, 04, 2015, an incident took place in Nowshera block of district Rajouri, where three people died fid-dling with a landmine. Another inci-dent took place in Pattan, Baramulla when 14 year old boy died while fid-dling with hand grenade. In June this year, Border Security Force (BSF) Sub- Inspector was injured in yet an-other landmine blast near L-o-C in Tangdhar sector of north Kashmir’s Kupwara district.

The project started after the meetings with higher authorities in government department and army and police officials keeping in view the sensitivity of the area of intervention. It was necessary in

order to ensure their support and corporation throughout the entire process. In MRE Phase V meetings were conducted with Sarpanchs (local village head), Numberdar, and other village officials in order to streamline the process.

The Information Education and Communication Material (IEC) material in the form of posters and leaflets contain safety and security messages which are kept in Urdu as well as in English keeping in view the languages spoken in these ar-eas. The messages are backed by relevant pictures to make it com-prehensive.

In phase V eight large scale awareness camps were conduct-ed in four districts i.e. Rajouri, Poonch, Baramulla and Kupwara. These camps were attended by lo-cal village heads, religious heads, villagers, children, teachers, por-ters, shepherds and even by army officials. In each camp more than 70 people participated.

Rs. 30 Lakhs distributed under Economic Revival Initiative (ERI) Project

An Idea of Economic Revival Initiative came handy as floods hit the valley

2100 rural women covered under Women Self Help

Group Scheme 352 WSHGs formed, 300 WSHGs savings linked, 32 WSHGs credits linked, 10 Joint Liability Groups

Aspiring to inculcate a spirit of entrepreneur-ship among rural women at the grassroots level more than 2100 women of district Kupwara were covered under the scheme Women Self Help Groups, (WSHGs) implemented by HELP Foundation under central government’s National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) Scheme.

The project emphasizes on formation and con-solidation of Women Self Help Groups for their collective socio-economic developments. The suc-cessive activities of Self Help Groups are, group savings, book keeping and capacitating women to manage their day to day needs. The projects main objective is to organize 5000 women from this fron-tier district into 500 Self Help Groups within the period of three years.

“In-addition, the scheme promotes internal lending to minimize the sufferings of individual group members, linking their savings to the banks for multiplying their savings and inculcating in them the habit of regular saving,” Project Coordinator, Na-zir Dar says.

“Basically our job is to link these groups with financial institutions so that they can avail credit facility at the times of their expansion and devel-opment, capacity building of groups regarding their day to day activities and inculcating in them the managerial skills,” Dar adds.

While providing the update, Project Coordina-tor, Kupwara, Nazir Dar says that, ”more than 300 women were provided bank credit who have creat-ed their small income generating units. In-addition 352 Women Self Help Groups formed along with 300 WSHGs Savings linked and 32 WSHGs Credit were linked along with the formation of 10 Joint Liability Groups and linkage of 1 credit JLG.”

Launched by HELP Foundation in September 2012 in the backward district of Kupwara the HELP team organized around 22 Awareness Camps at Village level to create mass awareness about the Scheme.

Moreover, around 20 capacity building pro-grammes have been conducted for capacity building, group dynamics, and monitoring credit discipline of the WSHGs and training of WSHGs on procedures and business development skills.

As the floods receded last September, the flood ravaged Kashmir suffered with multiple crisis ranging from food, water, medicine to rehabilitation. The floods im-pacted people on a large scale, mostly economically. Among them was the sec-tion who lost their homes as well as business infrastructure. Due to the intense financial crisis and colossal damage after the disaster the small business holders struggled much to come to terms. HELP Foundation came up with an innovative initiative of ‘Economic Revival’ with the objective to uplift this section of the soci-ety left with no means of survival.

After identifying the commercially affected people, like provisional store keep-ers, Auto-Rickshaw owners, cart-owners, tailors and skilled labourers like carpet weavers and handloom weavers, HELP Foundation under the project ERI provided reimbursements in the form of cheques ranging from Rs. 10,000- Rs. 50,000 with the objective to assist the affectees to revive their lost livelihood sources. All this went after thorough assessment with monthly monitoring and reporting.

ERI covered the economic revival of small traders and business owners, perma-nent shelters for poor and under privileged, livestock support for relevant down trodden, financial assistance to the artisans associated with Kashmir craft. Under this project cheques ranging from Rs. 10,000-Rs.20,000 were provided to 78 small traders for their business revival. In-addition 30 carpet weavers were revived by providing cheques to the tune of Rs.600,000. Around Rupees 30 lakhs have been disbursed among the beneficiaries under ERI project.

Until now, the project has catered 40 commercially hit areas from different localities each from Srinagar, Baramulla and Kupwara districts. Apart from HELP Foundations individual loans which ranges more than 200, some 825 beneficiaries related to ERI were benefited under project Godfrey Philips India Limited (GPI).

With proper monitoring over the improvements under ERI project, HELP is in-tending to provide second instalments to the needy beneficiaries, so that their livelihood infrastructure can excel.

HELP Foundation Action-Aid join hands in ‘Securing

Rights and Sustainable Livelihood’ in Budgam

7 Districts with 14879 Households covered

under Qurbani Package on Eid-ul-Adha

Eid Al-Adha reminds every Muslim that one has to

sacrifice his good for the happiness of others

Seven districts with 14879 households were covered under Qurbani package im-plemented by HELP Foundation on Eid-ul-Adha with meat distributions in the areas of Srinagar, Baramulla, Pulwama, Kupwara, Budgam, Ganderbal and Bandipore.

After special prayers to mark the day, Muslims offer Udhiyah (sacrifice), a ritual that reminds us of the great act of sacrifice Prophet Ibrahim and his son Ismaeel were willing to make for the sake of God.

With distributions under various HELP Foundation units, 1978 households were covered in Srinagar, 1958 in Baramulla, 900 in Pulwama, 800 in Bandipore, 623 in Gan-derbal, 2673 in Budgam and around 5947 households were covered in the frontier dis-trict Kupwara.

“Many of these families don’t get to eat meat all the year other than this occasion due to extreme poverty. May Allah (SWT) re-ward all who shared in this effort to make it possible, and accept it from all of us,” says Nighat Shafi, Chairperson HELP foundation.

“We distribute the meat mostly among the poor and this is the nice way for the fam-ilies who cannot afford the whole animal,” she adds.

People usually spend huge amount on clothes and other things but forget their poor fellow muslims. So, the priority was giv-en towards the under privileged and back-ward areas of the state, where poor people hardly enjoy the luxurious lifestyle.

HELP Foundation and Ac-tion-Aid supported by European Commission for Humanitarian Aid and

Civil Protection (ECHO) launched a programme,” Securing Rights and Sus-tainable Livelihoods,” in Budgam district with the objective to cater the people dependent on the Informal Economy (PIE) in Kashmir. The main objective of the programme stands to.

� To secure sustainable livelihood of marginalized and vulnerable people dependent on informal

economy. � To protect social and economic

rights of marginalized and vulner-able people dependent on infor-mal economy.

� To build capacities of marginalized and vulnerable people dependent on informal economy to advocate for and secure social security and better working conditions.

� To enable marginalized and vul-nerable people dependent on in-formal economy to start their own workshops/manufacturing units and sell their products directly in the market.

� To enable the children of margin-alized and vulnerable people de-

pendent on informal economy to access education.

In order to commence the activ-ities and extract the data from the target area HELP Foundation and Action-Aid has identified ten villag-es of Beerwah block where general baseline has been carried out by the end of September 2015 followed by Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) in the area.

Moreover In continuation of the project One Day training programme was organized in response to the project PIE in collaboration with EDI (Entrepreneur developmental insti-tute) by Help foundation and Action-aid at block Beerwah in two villages of the target area Chewdara and Ohangam.The main objective of the programme was to sensitize the tar-get population about various govern-ment-sponsored schemes particu-larly schemes offered by (JKEDI) and link them with various credit facilita-tors. Most of the participants in the programme were women folk, Self Help Groups (SHG’s), locals, Village heads, Panchs and field mobilisers. Mr. Dheeraj from EDI, Miss Shafia from Action-Aid and Mr. Tahmeed from HELP Foundation coordinated the programme.

HELP, CHILDLINE teams up with state administration for networking and advocacy for

children in the state

In-order to work together with the allied sys-tems like Police, Health Care, Juvenile Justice, Trans-port, Education and the Community to create child friendly systems, HELP and CHILDLINE 1098 have undertaken networking and advocacy with govern-ment and non-government agencies regarding the present scenario of children in the state.

A meeting with Assistant Labour Commissioner (ALC) was held where full mutual support and co-operation from government was agreed against the child labour.

In-addition, meeting with Senior Superintendent of Police, Srinagar (SSP) was conducted for coopera-tion and support regarding issues of child labour, child trafficking and beggary cases and issuance of particu-lar Child Beggary Circular for CHILDLINE Srinagar was discussed. “District Social Welfare Officer, Bal Ashram, Srinagar was taken into confidence regarding tempo-rary shelter for CHILDLINE cases,” Srinagar Coordina-tor, Shabir Ahmad said.

“CHILDLINE Srinagar conducted a meeting with the Chairman of Juvenile Welfare Board (JWB) re-garding formation of CHILDLINE Advisory Board (CAB),” Shabir adds.

As per the update provided by CHILDLINE coordina-tor, Srinagar, “the director of tourism, Farooq Shah was taken into confidence to incorporate the CHILDLINE Logo on Jammu and Kashmir Tourism website.”

Four years back, HELP Foundation joined hands with Child line India Foundation to set up the valley’s first child line service in Srinagar, Kashmir regard-ing juvenile justice for children in need of care and protection (CNCP). The services are available for missing children, abandoned children and children in conflict with law.

During the last couple of months CHILDLINE Sri-nagar intervened in fourteen missing cases from dif-ferent areas of Kashmir valley in which three cases have been permanently restored to their families in front of Nodal officer, Juvenile welfare Board (JWB) and rest of cases are in process.

Nawraiz, a child from Shalimar, Srinagar, who come under category of child labour was successfully restored to his parents. CHILDLINE Srinagar has inter-vened in forty sponsorship cases in which some cases were provided educational support and few more were added in sponsorship list for future intervention.

SAM starts boarding facility for Secondary

class studentsBoarding facility is desired to give children a better

and early edge in life — the environment, both in academics and extra-curricular activities

In-order to provide supportive environment for underprivileged and or-phan students, Shah Anwar Memorial School (SAM) Khumriyal, Kupwara started boarding facility for the secondary classes from the month of October.

From the last couple of months, HELP Foundation was pondering over the implementation of residential education with special education needs in this educational institution which provides quality education to around 200 or-phans and students from ‘Below Poverty Line families’, especially girls in 20 identified villages of the frontier district Kupwara.

The project’s long term aim is to bring all the orphans and under privi-leged of Kupwara district, estimated to be about hundreds in number, into the educational mainstream and provide the capacity building of teachers includ-ing remedial education and trainings.

“The basic idea to start the boarding classes for secondary level is to teach students independence and self-reliance,” says Principal SAM.

“One important motivation to start boarding facility in SAM Khumriyal is to help students to perform well in the exams. Because some students have difficulties in understanding the studies,” says Administrative Officer and HR Manager, HELP Foundation, Aftab Bhat.

“Part of this comes from a desire to give children a better and early edge in life — the environment, both in academics and extra-curricular activities,” adds Aftab.

HELP Foundation has established a computer lab with 60 student intake capacity at a time and a library that has almost 3000 books of various titles.

Almost 700 students annually benefit from these two facilities. Different workshops, arithmetic classes and career counselling programmes help to generate a desire for knowledge in youth and as well as senior citizens.

This project focuses on rural children who are struggling to get education due to poverty or conflict. Under this project, it would support about 2000 children in the 6-14 years age group in the project area to improve their basic competencies and learning levels. HELP Foundation has already got trained staff and a pool of resource persons to conduct the supplementary education activities.

Editor-in-Chief: Mrs. Nighat Shafi Pandit, Editor: Zaheer Khan, Published From: 50 Tulsi Bagh Behind Amar Singh College Srinagar,Suggestions/feedback, if any, may be emailed to : zaheerkhankt@gmail.com

HELP FOUNDATION UPDATE is also available on the web at www.jkhf.in Published by : HELP FOUNDATION JAMMU AND KASHMIR

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