In October 2009 the OMID foundation started cooperating with the Association for Protection of Child Laborers (APCL). This organization maintains now 4 buildings in the South of Tehran, where children of broken families, who are forced to work and are even abused, receive help. The employees are able to provide a sense of security for these children; they render medical aid and teach the children about hygiene and HIV. They also try to appeal to the families of the children to make them more tolerate. Since the children are chronically malnourished, we support the food program which provides all children with a warm lunch, fruit and milk. Mothers are taught how to cook a balanced diet for their children, thus avoiding malnutrition and the related sicknesses and lifelong effects.
In 2009, 600 children were daily cared for, in 2013 the number had increased to 1000 and then 1402 children have once daily warm food according to WHO recommendation for children nutritional need. Also, the quality of nutrition has improved. In 2009 only 17% of the children were adequately fed, in 2013 the number had increased to 41%. The number of kitchen helpers has increased. These came mostly from families of the needy children, thus providing an income for these families.
During the years 2015 until 2019, a nutritious hot lunch was distributed daily to avoid
malnutrition in children and to promote their health, following WHO guidelines. According to the last census in 2019, 1414 children received these meals. Since these children work very hard, again following the guidelines of the WHO, a “Healthy Breakfast Initiative” was launched in 2018, so that a nutritious breakfast was added to their daily warm meal. Due to the strong outbreak of Covid 19 in Iran and its curfews, distribution has become very difficult, specially since the children are no longer allowed to eat together. The food was then packaged before distribution and the volunteers took these to their houses for this reason the number of food packages increased because they had to share the food with other family members. On the other hand, covid 19 incidence is so high in Iran which make OMID foundation help this charity for health care for example mask and gloves.
Due to curfews and material hardship for the children, assistance for victims of violence had to be expanded. Medical assistance, health education and hygiene measures have been greatly expanded. Daily food distribution has doubled in those months. High inflation means that many families can no longer buy enough to eat, and the economic situation made it impossible to earn extra money with a part time job. Due to the collapse of Afghanistan, many refugee families arrive with children, mostly with only one bag. 148 children and their families were helped. New classes were set up for the childre so that they can catch up on the missing knowledge and also the virtual equipment for the online lessons was handed over.
Due to legal regulations, the number of rooms for classes had to be increased to 9. Even the cost of food has risen sharply due to inflation.
At the moment, 1173 children are fully supported and adding the number of those who are partly supported the total number is 2300. Annually, including the supported families, the total number is 67,730 meals,
So far, we have supported the APCL with EUR 430,513,00
Our Project goal is:
- The demand is predicted to increase in the future because of high inflation rate and the increasing number of the people in need. So more financial support will be needed.
- Provide more facilities for training life skills and being able to have an income.
- Be more helpful to the children laborer and protect them from the dangerous environment around.