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Bright Futures (India)

23 March 2013 UCF Comments Off

Hosur Bande Clinic (India)
Bright Futures Child Aid and Development Fund Australia, together with its local development partner the Bangalore City Mission (BCM), aims to improve health and educational outcomes for the adults who are quarry labourers in Hosur Bande (quarry) and their children

Hosur Bande is a huge granite quarry on the outskirts of the city of Bangalore with appalling conditions for the workers. Thousands of quarry labourers break granite slabs down to building stone and gravel by hand. Dust fills the air and respiratory illnesses and serious work related injuries are prevalent. Explosions at midday each day send rocks flying indiscriminately as large sheets of granite are blown apart. Workers live in small thatched huts which have no running water, sanitation or power.

The Bright Futures project partners provide a health clinic at the Hosur Bande quarry. The clinic has a trained nurse on staff and doctors and health screening groups are organised (e.g. eye hospital, diabetes) and treats many thousands each year.

The project partners also run a small childcare centre near the edge of the quarry and near to where the quarry workers and their families live. The aim is to improve health and educational outcomes for the adults who are quarry labourers in Hosur Bande and their children. The reason for having the little child care centre in such a terrible place is that so that the mums who work in the quarries have a safe place to leave their babies and children (pic below) while breaking stone rather than taking them into the quarry with them while they work and thereby exposing them to the dangers present. Around 30 children are cared for in the childcare centre each day.

The funds will be used to provide medicine, education materials and necessary resources at the Hosur Bande community development project run by the project partners (Bright Futures/BCM)

  • $600 – to provide waterproof roofing for the child care centre to enable the centre to operate in all weather conditions.
  • $200 – to provide educational materials (books/pencils/teaching materials) for the child care centre.
  • $400 – to provide educational materials (books/pencils/teaching materials) for the Hosur Band School.
  • $800 – to provide basic medicines to assist quarry workers and their children presenting for treatment at the Hosur Bande Clinic

The Directors of UCF approved a grant of $2,000 to Bright Futures for their vital work on behalf of these vulnerable children and families.