ANVAL IIEPOIIT 2020-2021 Legal & Administrative Information Trustees Neal Rajdev Yousaf Zamir Raj Gosai Charity Name Joy Home For Children Working Name Goa Outreach Charity Number 1131247 Registered Office 85 Hamilton Avenue, Surbiton, KT6 7PS Independent Examiner lan Hewitt (AAT)
Organisation and Structure
Joy Home For Children (Goa Outreach – Working Name)
The charity was registered with the Charity Commission of England & Wales in 2009 and is identified by its unique number 1131247. The main aims and objectives are
Relief from poverty and sickness, the preservation and protection of good health and the advancement of education of orphans and disadvantaged children/young people regardless of their religion, class, caste or gender through the work of local Indian charities based in India including Goa Outreach - JRS Charitable Trust - Joy Rehabilitation Centre for children affected by HIV/AIDS.
The Charity is organised and managed by a body of three Trustees who are responsible for setting policies and monitoring their implementation.
To achieve the above-mentioned aims and objectives the Charity receives donations as monthly sponsorship, general donations and fund-raising activities carried out by Volunteers and Donors. These donations are then used to support education, medical care and wellbeing of vulnerable and disadvantaged children and young adults in India.
The Charity has very few overheads with one paid staff on the equivalent of just £200 per month.
Indian activities are provided and managed by Goa Outreach, JRS Charitable Trust and Joy Rehabilitation Centre for children affected by HIV/AIDS working alongside volunteers.
Goa Outreach
Goa Outreach is our project based in Goa that supports children and young adults living in slums and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The work revolves around ensuring the children have access to full time education by providing them with basic needs and support to do so, which they would otherwise struggle to obtain due to lack of means or support.
A total of 154 children receives educational support and other regular facilities such as health care, medical treatment and good nutrition with the aim of releasing them from the cycle of poverty which is prominent in these slum communities.
The children also access our centre for tuition, food, to collect supplies or just for a safe place to relax and meet the other children/students.
JRS Charitable Trust
JRS Charitable Trust – Indian Registered 174/2004 is the Indian working name for Joy Home for Children.
Joy Rehabilitation Centre
The centre is a permanent home with 3 acres of land which serves as their playground, providing a safe and secure environment which children return to after a hard day of schooling.
All children above the age of 5 are registered into a local government school which is a 1 km walk from Joy Home. The children’s syllabus includes Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Computing, Sanskrit and Telugu (the native language of Andhra Pradesh). English is also taught once the children are 5 years of age. Joy Home provides the children with stationery and school uniform as well as funding their school fees.
The children are provided with a well-balanced and nutritious diet. Lunch is provided by the school for the children and any health care issues that arise are dealt with by Dr. Jyothi. The children are trained in many different fields to ensure that they are able to become independent in the future. After completion of their education children are offered vocational courses such as nursing, lab technician, mechanics, computing and electronics.
Appointing new Trustees
Potential Trustees are selected from recommendations from existing Trustees and Volunteers. Any recommendation is interviewed to see if the candidate has appropriate skills beneficial to trusteeship. Upon successful selection, the trustees vote at the next trustees meeting in regard to any new appointment.
Achievements
The global Pandemic and National Lockdown in India
This year saw the whole world reel under the fear of COVID-19 (Coronavirus). India was especially hard hit with severe lockdowns which effectively delayed the spread, but at a huge cost to the poorest in the community. Due to the desperate situation the families we support were facing, we started giving out rations from day 1 of the national lockdown when it came into force. Luckily, we had pre-emptively bought supplies and were in a good starting position when the news of a national lockdown hit.
Most families we support live a hand to mouth existence and with no notice many families had no food in their homes. Robert headed out early morning to distribute rations to the families we help in Goa and once everyone had received their first set of rations, it was time for the second. We began to realise that this would be an enormous task as more and more families asked for help as the lockdown was extended.
Some people who tried to go out to find food were brutally beaten by police, everyone was living in fear of being beaten, starving or catching Covid.
For the full national lockdown, the Goa centre was transformed into a supply hub where we bought in bulk and the basics of rice, daal, sugar, flour, salt, oil, vegetables were then distributed sometimes to 100’s of families a day. We were honoured to be the first to do this and as time went on more and more joined in helping many families that had no income and no food.
Goa Outreach Education Project
The education project at Goa Outreach has stabilised over the last year with just a few new students. We are setting a cap of around 150 students as this is a natural limit for man power and funding alike. However, with the added complication of Covid, we might need to lower this number as the Covid situation does not seem to be ending any time soon, which is having a detrimental effect in the amount of support the charity receives.
We had prepared all the educational requirements ready for the school year, but sadly the schools remained shut for nearly all the children. Some 10th standard (16 years old students) and college students had a few ‘offline’ classes during the year.
Most of the children needed to pivot into having online studies. Thankfully most of the older students had access to a WhatsApp account which became the norm for transmitting school work, however this was not the case for many of the younger children and where needed we provided mobile phones, tablets and laptops and access to the internet.
Many children have really struggled this year as they just haven’t had the support they needed from schools, hopefully the upcoming year will be better but this is very dependent on how the Covid situation improves.
10th Standard Exams
We had great success with our 10th (GCSE level equivalent standard students) who took their exams, with the girls winning overall; receiving more distinctions and first-class grades. The new academic year also saw the greatest number of students starting their 10th standard with a total of 17 which is more than double the number of previous
years. However, the global pandemic has created a very difficult environment for learning so we will just have to wait and see what happens during exams this time.
The Brown House
The centre has had many roles throughout the year, from distribution and packing centre, providing educational support, a base for online classes and a food centre where the children can have a hot cooked meal. Several of the older students have helped support us by joining in with packing and distributing items during the lockdown which was a great help as we were helping so many families during the national lockdown.
Health Care
Throughout the year we have made sure that the children have had a supply of basic health requirements which has been increasingly welcome due to the lockdown where prices of many items have increased. We have also had to purchase a greater number of female personal items as the average age of our children rises.
Thankfully most of the children have only had simple side effects from Covid-19, although this is not the case for many of their older relatives. There was a slew of deaths of older relatives. Facemasks and sanitizers have been distributed, although this is not going to stop the spread in the lives of slum children who don’t have the ability to isolate or keep their distance from others due to their living conditions.
Work fitting dental braces has continued with several of the children finishing their treatment and they are delighted with their new smiles and of course delighted to get rid of the metal which caused them so much discomfort over the last year or two.
We have also provided help to one student who needed surgery to fix a birth defect (cleft pallet) and also dental reconstruction providing him with a much better smile.
Outreach Work
In contrast to the last few years, this year has seen us return to ‘outreach work’ as we have been distributing food and health packs to ‘our’ children and the local community who have been in need. The centre was receiving a great number of calls for help and we were also able to co-ordinate with officials to help families who had no home (asked to leave due to fear of covid-19 or had to leave as they had no work to pay for rent). Thousands of families were stranded in makeshift shanty towns at football stadiums and schools; we helped thousands with food and health care items.
The local community was our immediate goal with packs of dry goods being distributed on a daily basis, whenever possible vegetables were also included. During the lockdown we were kindly donated items from Coca-Cola and Nestle who provided drinks, food supplements, chocolates and more, it was a good addition to the basics that we continued to provide.
Future Plans
There are two scenarios that we will face in the upcoming year, with and without Covid restrictions.
If Covid continues to be an issue then I can foresee that funding will become further strained as our centre gains the majority of its funding from people who visit us and see the work we do first hand. Tourist flights are still cancelled and we can only hope the situation improves so that tourists can once again join us in Goa. If the Covid situation does not improve then we will have to find new sources of income to maintain the same level of support, however the added strain that Covid gives will make this an uphill struggle.
If we are in a post Covid world it will be great for the children to return to school and ‘offine’ education. We will be able to take advantage of an increase in possible donors visiting Goa and the Centre.
Our core mechanics will stay the same although a reduction in funding might mean a reduction in the number of children we can help. Usually, we add a good number of children each year as the older students finish education or move away
(back to their villages). But I do not see us adding any new children in the next year or two so that we can concentrate on the ones we currently help.
Financial Review
The Pandemic has hit the charity hard with the amount of donations it has received in the last year. The donations have decreased from an all-time high last year of £38,110 down by nearly a third to 27,323 this year (28% decrease). We are still able to continue for a year or more but we will need to secure more supporters and donors if we are to continue supporting the same number of children in the years to come.
Expenses overall came down from £34,556 the previous year to £30,765 for this financial year. Most of the saving being with education related costs as children were studying online.
Nutrition, which encompassed food parcels through the lockdown increased the most from £1,877 to £5,083, most of which was used to purchase dry goods and vegetables for the families.
Reserves Policy
The Charity continues to look forward and as such needs to have safeguards in place to protect against fluctuating income, costs and exchange rates, this is especially vital due to the current world pandemic outlook and the departure from the European Union. With this in mind we need to increase our reserves where possible so that we have a full years’ worth of expenses covered. At the moment we have just around seven months’ worth of reserves in place. With the support of donors and the end of the pandemic we hope to increase this for next year.
Public Benefit Statement
The trustees confirm that they have complied with their duty to have due regard to the guidance on public benefit published by the Commission in exercising their powers and duties.
Raj Gosai Trustee
CHARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WALES Independent examiner's report on the accounts Section A Independent Examiner's Report Report to the trusteosl mombors of Joy Home For Children On accounts for thg year ended Charity no {if any) 31°, March 2021 1131247 Set out on pages I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above harity I'the Trust'l for the year ended Responsibilities and As the charity trustees of the Trust, you are responsible for the preparation basis of report of the accounts in accordance with the requirernents of the Charities Act 2011 {"the Act.). I report in respect of my examination of the Trust's accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination, I have followed the applicable Directions given by Ihe Charity Commission under section 145{5)Ibl of the Act. I have compleled my examination. I confimi that no material matters have come to my attention {other than that disclosed below ") in connection with the examination which gives me cause to believe that in, any material respect.. accounting records were not kept in accordance with section 130 of the Act or the accounts do not arxord with the accounting records Independent examinerfs ststement I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached. Please delete the words in the brackets if they do not apply. Signed: Dato: 1110112021 Name: Mr lan Hewitt IMAAT} Relevant professional qualification(s) or body lif any): AAT Address: 58 Springfield Road Retford Nottinghamshire. DN22 6QR IER October 2018