Mydirectcharity.org is a charitable foundation dedicated to helping children in need. With the dedication of our volunteers, staff members and partners, we strive to improve the lives of kids who need help within the community.
We have placed our volunteers locally so as we can spot those in urgent need quickly and so as we can also ensure we deliver more efficiently.
Mydirectcharity.org also identifies and fundraise local organizations and projects in developing countries that are aimed at contributing to the population by giving the children in need the means to achieve self-sufficiency.
Mydirectcharity.org is aimed at supporting homeless children with shelter, food, clothing, health and education. Five main goals that will provide them with stability and development, and eventually result in becoming self-reliant individuals and alternatively stable providers to their families.
Our charity helps raise funds through various programs and initiatives for children in need. Our concept is different as we ensure a more direct involvement between the giver and the ones in need, thanks to living in a more digital world today and more especially thanks for the help of our volunteers locally. We aim to improve lives and make the world a better place for the young generations to come.
Since our inception, we’ve worked around the clock to expand our causes and help children who need our help. Our aim is to assist homeless, orphaned, indigent and other less privileged children for shelter, food, clothing, health and education and to support other social welfare institutions engaged in promoting these specific aims. The geographical target is any country where there exists an opportunity to help within the areas mentioned above.
Current activities
In September 2018, we started our project in the city of Antsirabe, Madagascar, where we spotted 6 children living on the pavements of the city. The number of children gradually grew to 65 of them so far. These children are from rural areas. They walk around 6 hours from their remote villages to come and beg in the city of Antsirabe. They are not all orphans, hence they don't fall into any criteria of local orphanages, who are limited to only shelter orphans. This became our primary reason to set up our NGO so as to give these children a chance to have a normal life. We don't really have any criteria as orphanages or any such limitations and at times, we also shelter the parents. We are helping the best we can as these children don't have much of a choice.
We have successfully achieved a little bit in each of the areas of help (Shelter, Food, Clothing, Health and Education).
Shelter is an important one as in winter, the temperature drops to 4 deg celcius on the streets of Antsirabe, but even more important as Shelter allows to consolidate the other 4 areas as Food, Clothing, Health and Education all in one place under one roof. Last winter was an eye opener for my team when we realised the children were keeping warm using body warmth stacking together on the pavements of shops and other buildings that they can find.
On food, we provide 1 to 1.5 meals a day to them, previously bringing them to the local market, but more recently, we have hired a local chef to cook them meals every day.
On clothing, we have gathered from donors in Switzerland, Norway and Mauritius warm clothes for the children in winter. Some have managed to keep these while most of them have sold their clothes in return for food, which brings us the importance of having a shelter once again so as to monitor our donated stuffs.
We have also started to provide them one shower with running water per week.
On Health, we have had some urgencies treating their teeth at the beginning. Some of them were such in a bad shape and a lack of hygiene. Every now and then, we have a doctor's visit for a health check and try to keep them as healthy as possible.
Education was our first area of help as one of our volunteers teaches them violin lessons every week. They love music so much and bonded with the team of volunteers so fast with their joint interest in music. They gave their first violin concert in December last year and it was an amazing success as within only a few months of teaching them, they were able to be little stars on their own.
The progress that we have achieved so far is tremendously rewarding for the whole team and we are much more encouraged to help these kids this year as much as we can.
We managed to send a few of them back to school as they aren't required to beg any more with our help. The parents were equally pleased of their kids progress and were indeed very happy for their kids to go back to school.
Now that we have handled most of the critical priorities, we've got a few more projects lined up in education Inc teaching the kids English - as Madagascar is a French speaking country, I believe English will give them a competitive advantage one day in their lives like if ever a large organisation looking for English speakers, they can be the lucky ones to obtain good jobs. We've also talked to a few local craft workshops so as to train the kids on woodcraft, which sells big in Madagascar. We taught them to write alphabets and numbers not so long ago and they were very skilled in shaping letters. They were very proud of their skills themselves.
Our areas of help are designed for long term help, so as to put them back on their feet one day, where they can earn their own money. These are our ultimate goals.
The charity operations in Antsirabe has slowly built up into a very convincing model of helping homeless kids, which we intend to replicate in other cities of Madagascar and further to other countries which require our help.
We are raising funds at the moment to urgently provide a shelter for the 65 homeless children in Antsirabe before the July 2019 winter comes. We would be very grateful for your contribution to provide the homeless children with a roof above their heads and a place where we can consolidate all of our activities such as food, clothing, health and education into one place.
Many thanks in advance
Vishal Tacouri
President
mydirectcharity.org
