‘Small things done in great love’. This is the motto of the Tender Heart Foundation, an NGO devoted to transforming the lives of the underprivileged and its founder Francis Kumar is a real-life example of this saying.
Francis grew up in an orphanage and from childhood felt the need to take up social work. He says, “When you go through a painful life and you grow up knowing what you went through, you always want to help others.”
With that vision in mind and after settling in Goa, he and his wife, Alison Kumar founded Tender Heart Foundation in 2008. Over a journey of nine years, the NGO has expanded to three centres in Goa (Margao, Ghandinagar and Zuarinagar) and one in Ghataprabha, Karnataka. The NGO mainly assists children, young girls and disadvantaged women who live in the slums and provides pre-school education, higher education sponsorship and vocational skills training in the form of tailoring and computer education.
Tender Heart Foundation run day care centres in all four locations with the aim of providing quality English medium education to underprivileged children. It involves three years of education (nursery, KG1, KG2) following which the NGO offers assistance in the enrollment process to a school for first standard onwards. Tender Heart Foundation provides the children with uniforms, notebooks, mid-day meals and daily transport to the centre.
Francis says that while there are government-aided schools from first standard onwards, “you cannot take a child who is seven years old and straightaway tell them to go to school.” That’s where this NGO steps in to provide a strong base through pre-primary education to the children who cannot afford it.
The NGO also runs a children’s club where the foundation visits the nearby slum areas thrice a week and encourages the children there to play. The staff and children engage in games like football, cricket and playing with a skipping rope with the main idea being to get the children to socialize.
Tender Heart Foundation offers a six month tailoring course to women and girls from poor backgrounds who have no education or have dropped out from school where they are trained in designing, pattern cutting, tailoring and sewing machine maintenance. On the completion of the course, they are provided with a certificate as well as a sewing machine on an interest free loan to empower the women to earn a livelihood.
Parvathi is just one of many success stories from the tailoring course. Her husband worked on daily wages and would only get work for 12 to 15 days a month and as they had a small child, she couldn’t work either. Their financial situation was grim. She completed her training and with the sewing machine presented to her, her life blossomed. Today, she earns around Rs. 5000 a month and has plans to open a shop in her village and also employ a couple of women to scale up her business.
The NGO also provides a basic computer training course open to those 15 years and above to offer the less privileged an essential skill needed to apply for many jobs. Children with medical needs who cannot afford treatment and widows in need of ration are also helped by Tender Heart Foundation. The NGO has also provided scholarships for 14 students to pursue undergraduate and postgraduate degrees.
Tender Heart Foundation has helped educate approximately 1000 children through their day care centres, more than 1200 women have graduated from their tailoring course, around 300 people have acquired computer training and approximately 60 children have been provided with medical treatment.
This NGO is truly putting into practice the proverb ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’ By educating children and empowering the less privileged with skills to earn a livelihood, Tender Heart Foundation is helping them and their families escape the vicious cycle of generational poverty.
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