Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page. I will be running the Southampton Marathon on Sunday 24th April 2022. I have never run that far before, so it will be a challenge! I am raising money for Project Mala - a charity doing great things in India. If charitable giving isn't enough to make you want to donate, please check out the gallery on this page, and consider a donation towards 26.2 miles of my running T-Rex hand, hunched running style, and seriously pained facial expressions.

Thank you so much in advance for any and every donation, no matter how small or how big! I genuinely do appreciate your support!

Please check out below to read more about Project Mala...

Education is something we in the UK take for granted. The freedom of childhood is something most of us are able to enjoy. This is not the case for many children around the world.

Project Mala was founded in 1989 as an action programme for the abolition of child labour in the hand knotted carpet industry in India. They provide education for children in the carpet weaving belt around Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Varanasi; a largely rural region, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, in the north-east of India. Initially set up to help children who were subject to child labour, the objectives of Project Mala are as follows:

-    Facilitating personal growth through education and rehabilitation training
-    Providing physical improvement through healthcare and nutrition
-    Mainstreaming the children into a formal education system
-    No discrimination between boys and girls

As such, each child enrolled on the programme receives:

-    a high quality education up to secondary school level, delivered by capable and qualified teachers
-    School equipment, including books, stationery, schoolbags and uniform
-    a hot, nutritional meal daily
-    healthcare facilities; including examination and treatment throughout their studies
-    regular parent/teacher meetings
-    a schooling with measures which aim to help them stay free of class, caste, societal, and sartorial pressures when in school

Recently, 3,407 children applied for a place in a Project Mala school – just 547 places were available. Currently, 80% of the funding comes from individual child sponsors. To date, Project Mala has enrolled over 10,000 students from over 45 villages as the project now consists of 5 Pre-schools, 6 Primary schools, 4 Middle schools, 2 Secondary schools and 1 Intermediate college.

The work Project Mala has done is phenomenal. Project Mala operates in desperately poor regions, and struggles against societal norms such as substandard government schools, parental illiteracy, a culture of child labour, a “work over education” mentality, and embedded gender roles. Despite this, Mala has succeeded in increasing awareness of parents in particular and the society in general for child education, championing female empowerment and enabling articulation of aspirations, as well as drastically improving the level of education in the region.

Being a smaller charity, Project Mala is reliant on charitable funding, and you can clearly see the impact your donation with have on the children and communities where Project Mala operates. As an example, for single child sponsorship it costs: Pre School - £8/m, Primary School - £11/m, Middle School - £15/m, Secondary School - £25/m. Our combined donations will help Project Mala to continue to enable children’s education.

I hope that with your help, and by running the 2022 Southampton Marathon for Project Mala, together we can make a small, but meaningful difference to so many lives far less privileged than our own.

Please get in touch for more information about the charity, and check out their website: https://projectmala.org.uk/index

Thanks!



Sam




Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving - they'll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they'll send your money directly to the charity. So it's the most efficient way to donate - saving time and cutting costs for the charity.