Good morning,
Howard has asked me to make sure that you received news of his latest experiences during his travel to India. He is in India, helping to launch distributions of Vitamin A and Deworming medicines with our program partners who work directly with the 1.1 million children and mothers that we reach in our Operation 20/20 program in various locations in India. Notes from Howard’s daily experiences, in his own words, are below. Pretty amazing!--Ashley
Greetings from Pune, India!
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| Photo by Matt Kettmann |
We rounded the corner onto the road to Pune and looked out on fifty to sixty bare bottoms, men squatting by the railroad tracks using the field as their morning bathroom. This is not unusual for India and is one of the sanitation challenges we face in helping to rid the children from parasites.
The slums we ended up in yesterday were a little better, one common latrine for fifty families. We were outside of Pune, about three and a half hours from Mumbai for a vitamin A and deworming distribution as part of Operation 20/20. We're presently reaching 70,000 children in this area surrounding Pune. The population of the city is 2.5 million and there are over 1 million people living in 564 slums that are in and around the city. These are generational slums and the conditions are bleak. Families of four live in 10x10 rooms that are all they have.
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| Photo by Matt Kettmann |
Our partners in Pune are Milind Shah"s organization, Shri Deepak Shah Sakalp Foundation and the Municipal Government. We are encouraged to see our partners now putting in basic hand washing, latrines and potable water into 361 slums. We also got to participate in children's hygiene classes, nutrition classes, and a prenatal education program, all run by the local health workers. Our vitamin A and deworming distributions went really well, the children were just beautiful and so appreciative that we were there.
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| Photo by Matt Kettmann |
When we were leaving we noticed a rickety bridge going over a ravine that led to another slum. As we wandered across we noticed another slum—this one was plastic covered hovels—the most meager of dwellings and some very poor women huddled outside. I realized this was the next level of poverty down and yet it is still a big step above the street dwellers that you see all over Mumbai - people who live on the pavement or in alleys, or families living under the overpass.
Our work here is so needed and our challenge is always to continue finding the poorest of the poor—the children that no one else are reaching.
Best,
Howard
To read “Health for Pune City’s Poor: Giving Vitamin A and Deworming Medicine to the Children of Pune’s Slums” written by The Santa Barbara Independent’s Matt Kettman who is in India with Howard right now, follow this link: http://independent.com/news/2008/feb/25/health-pune-citys-poor/.
Matt Kettmann will be reporting from India until March 4. To read Matt’s daily updates from India go to Independent.com/india.
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Howard B Schiffer
Founder & President
VITAMIN ANGELS
P.O. Box 42029
Santa Barbara, CA 93140
Ph: 805 564 8400
Fx: 805 564 8499
Web: www.VitaminAngels.org