Sos childrens villages

SOLAPUR, India: Out on a street in an Indian village, half a dozen children gather around their teacher who points a stick at the diagrams on a wall, one of many murals in the neighbourhood being used to help poor students keep up with their education during the coronavirus pandemic. With schools shut since March in a COVID-19 lockdown, teachers in Nilamnagar, western India, became concerned that some youngsters would fall behind because their families cannot afford an Internet subscription for online classes. So they came up with a workaround – children like playing on the streets, so they would take their lessons outside. "Since most of the families lack resources to educate their kids digitally, we had to come up with an innovative method to keep children invested in education," Ram Gaikwad, a teacher at Asha Marathi Vidyalaya school, told AFP ahead of Teachers' Day in India on Saturday (Sep 5). The outdoor classrooms for a total of 1,700 students aged between six and 16 … [Read more...] about Indian school paints village walls for outdoor COVID-19 pandemic classes

KATHMANDU: A 35-year-old woman and her three children, aged between four and 11, were killed in western Nepal when heavy rains brought down their mud-and-stone house early on Tuesday (Aug 11), police said. The poor Himalayan nation has recorded 198 deaths due to landslides and floods triggered by pre-monsoon and monsoon rains since late May, while in neighbouring India, 134 people have died in the states of Assam and Bihar , though flood waters have now receded in most places. The rainy season typically ends in September in South Asia. Nepal police official Janak Raj Pandey said that five other members of the family, including the woman's husband and her parents, survived the incident in Doti, 440km west of the capital Kathmandu. "The house collapsed while the family was asleep following incessant rain," Pandey told Reuters. Large swathes of farm land and villages have been submerged in the southern plains bordering India, while landslides or floods have upended roads and … [Read more...] about Mother and three children killed after heavy rain brought down mud-and-stone house in Nepal

KATHMANDU: Landslides triggered by heavy rains killed nine more people in Nepal this week, raising the Himalayan nation’s death toll from floods and landslides to 160 since late May, a government official said on Wednesday (Jul 29). Seven people from the same family, including three children and three women, were killed in their sleep late on Tuesday when their house was swept away in the remote Naraharinath village, 430km northwest of the capital Kathmandu. Two people were killed in another house that was destroyed by a second landslide in the same village, Home Ministry official Murari Wasti said, adding three others were rescued. At least 58 are still missing and 87 injured, he said. READ: Floods, COVID-19 hobble two of India's poorest states READ: Bangladesh faces further flood crisis in monsoon-hit South Asia Landslides and floods are common in Nepal during the annual May-September monsoon rains that lash South Asia. In the adjoining eastern Indian state of … [Read more...] about Landslides kill nine people in remote Nepal village

KOTA KINABALU: As the sun began to set, fisherman Lan Tumpat docked his rickety wooden boat. The 30-year-old then hoisted his oar, a fishing rod and an empty pail onto the battered wooden planks in front of his home. “No fish today. The winds were blowing strong and I came back,” said Mr Lan, wiping sweat off his brow with a rag. “Not worth risking being capsized in the dark,” he added in broken Malay. Mr Lan lives with his wife and five children at the floating village of Kampong Tanjung Aru Lama, around 50m off the coast of Sabah’s capital, Kota Kinabalu. Like his father and grandfather, Mr Lan, a stateless sea gypsy, feeds his family by combing the South China Sea for grouper, red carp and catfish. However, he said fishing has become more hazardous by the day in recent years. “I’ve been fishing all my life. But over the last few years, the weather changes very quickly and winds are more unpredictable. There is more danger of capsizing,” said Mr Lan. Like the … [Read more...] about Sabah sea gypsies grapple with dwindling fish catch, sinking villages as climate change threatens way of life

The island of Sumba in eastern Indonesia has abundant natural charms and ancient cultural traditions. Yet Sumba’s many attractions conceal a sinister practice that has allowed men to uproot women from their families, erase their dreams and ambitions, and force them into marriage. This has been going on for many years on the island of more than 750,000 people, but a recent 29-second video of a young woman desperately crying while she is carried away by five men has captured the attention of Indonesians everywhere. One June morning this year, a man tied a horse to the fence of a family house where the 21-year-old woman, Ratih*, lived in Dameka village in Sumba, in East Nusa Tenggara province. “According to tradition, that signifies that a daughter in the family would be taken for kawin tangkap [catch-a-bride],” says Herlina Ratu Kenya, secretary of the Association of Theologically Educated Women (Peruati) Sumba. Ratih had been working and living in Bali for several years. She … [Read more...] about Women abducted for marriage, and often raped, in Indonesia – it’s the custom, villagers say