Children Walking Tall - Charity In Goa

poipleshadow

We've done it! - Yes, it is true! As of 4th March 2007 "The Mango House" is a fully registered and recognised Children's home under the Goa Children's Act. A signed, sealed and delivered licence certificate finally arrived on our doorstep some 16 months after our original application. The journey has been long, hard and traumatic at times. We would like to thank everyone who has helped and believed in what we do as without your help our dream would never have come true.

Last July we thought we were beat as we received notice that our application had been denied. It was a tough time for everyone but we were not willing to give up. We submitted an appeal and then spent the next 6 months meeting with the government and putting our case forward. In the end the Chief Secretary of Goa rightly decided that there were no good reasons for denying our licence. Finally early this year we received an order from the government giving us the go ahead. To be sure we didn't start straight away but decided to wait until we received the certificate.

We would like to personally thank the Chief Secretary, Roshel and everybody who helped with securing our licence.

The children have continually asked over the last six months when they can return to the house. Every week we had to tell them, 'not yet, hopefully soon'. I am sure the children were as frustrated as we were. When we finally got the chance to say - 'we have our licence', the children were delighted and exploded into cheers and song.

One of the requirements of getting our licence was to employ a few more members of staff to work at The Mango House. We have recently employed new staff on either full time or on a trial basis we have been looking for an accountant, full time social worker and gardener. We have always been very fortunate with our staff and have had Aloysius and his wife Sangeeta working with us for over a year as house parents and Saroja working as a cook/cleaner.

As we have our licence our staff will grow and hopefully we will then be able to help more children providing them with the chance of an education, nutritious food, medical attention and a safe place to rest and learn.

Thank you to everyone! - We've done it..... )

for more info news then look here News...

Enjoy!

noflylist

My question would be, is this work missionary related? Website does not provide any clue. I would seriously look into supporting it if is purely charitable.

batistuta

Noflylist ,Check out a post by the Op in this thread.

http://www.indiamike.com/india/showt...8#post21 5038

This organisation is not missionary related.

Nick-H

Congratulations on your success

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poipleshadow

Noflylist - No it's definately NOT missionary in the slightest! - I am one of the founders and I'm one of those strange people who don't believe in God! (Which I have to say isn't that easy in India - everybody believes in something). It makes it good as I'm very accepting of other religions though... Most of the children we help are Hindu, some are Muslim, a couple are Christian... There is no religious content to anything we do, we celebrate Eed, Holy, Diwali, CHristmas etc just as it's a good excuse to have a party and give presents out... ) - hope this helps

Rob

Nick-H

Ho Ho, yes! We could do this one in the 'asking about salary' thread.

It is very hard to explain being an atheist!

capt_mahajan

The trick is to pretend to be an aggressive atheist at first. Then people leave you alone
Partly because they don't want to start questioning their beliefs, i think.

Worked for me.

machadinha

I was on a busride once in the middle of godforsaken West Bengal. People would often ask me about my religion because of my distinctive hairdo at the time (in fact I had inadvertently sat down on the ladies' side and there was no room to move anymore anyway, we were all headed to a festival and these grannies kept giggling in incomprehensible tongues and patting me and going "babaji, babaji," I think they were actually convinced I was a holy man, my female companion in the meantime equally welcomingly and protectively stuck on the men's side). In this case the only one who spoke some English was a local schoolmaster, he was later to show us the way at our destination. So anyway off he went, are you Krishna? No. Are you Christian? No. Are you this that and the other? No.

So finally he looks at me radiantly and exclaims: "Aha, I see sir! You are independent!!"

Ah India...

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poipleshadow

Nick-H - I didn't know what you meant by...

machadinha

See Being asked about your salary . Sorry for bit of hijacking thread btw, you know how it goes.

Nick-H

I guess you didn't see the current thread about how to answer such questions that visitors to india often get asked.

Dilliwala

Actually, despite the communists being in power for 30 years, Bengalis are just as religious and "god-fearing" as the ROI. Don't believe it? Go there at Durga Puja time - u'll find even the communists celebrating with "full devotion and fervour"

poipleshadow

We've just got our first letter from Women and Child asking to help... Which is nice as we feel like we're part of the big picture now... (simple things...)

Thanks

Rob

emmac82

i hope i get my CRB check back in time to volunteer before all the spaces get taken up!

birds

Congratulations! Great work you are doing.

Unless there are no more children who need you, I hope you never give up!