Stories of Hope

Alamara Begam lived with her two children in Shyampur PS, Howrah, West Bengal. The sole earning member of the family was her husband, Azahar who used to work as a mason in Mumbai. Both her children studied in a local school in Howrah. Though the income was meagre they led a happy life. It was when Azahar and Alamara were diagnosed HIV+ that their world came crashing down.
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Tejaswani was born very weak and pale due to Beta Thalassemia Major. Beta Thalassemia is a blood disorder in which the body has a problem producing beta globin, a component of haemoglobin. She is the third child of Shankar, who works as a driver and Shamala, an attendant. Fourteen-year-old Tejaswani undergoes blood transfusion every few weeks, since she was 3. She has to bear excruciating pain during blood transfusion, but her life depends on it.
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Unlike a normal well, a duck well is not more than 10-15 ft deep and is usually dug outside a village. Most villages in Daringbadi have 4-5 duck wells depending on the size of the population. A natural source of water, most people here depend on these wells for their daily chores. During monsoons, these wells brim up quickly and water gets contaminated, making it unfit for drinking and other household purposes. This problem faced by Daringbadi villages was very well addressed by Goonj with support from Ernst and Young India and the team encouraged over 80 people in Jogerimaha to come together and clean up their own duck well.
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35-years-old Munnikrishnamma hails from Hollarahalli, Devanhalli Taluk, Bengaluru Rural District. Life has never been easy for her as she was diagnosed with bilateral polio at the early age of one. The illness affected her lower limbs and made mobility very constrained for her. As normal movement was a challenge she had to crawl on her limbs to move around. Trying to make her movement easy Munnikrishnamma’s brother provided her with a wooden board to go to school.
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17-years-old Shobhna hails from a small village, Bahour in Puducherry and is a student of standard 12th. She goes to Annusamy Higher Secondary school in her village. Her parents are agricultural labourers and work very hard to make their ends meet. Even with the struggles of everyday life education of their daughter was always a priority for them. Complementing the aspirations of her parents Sobhna also took her studies very seriously and was excellent at academics. She was not only good at academics but also good at all extra-curricular activities. Overall, she enjoyed going to school and interacting with students and teachers.
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