Radio Cracker Projects

Tearfund / Oasis Trust

In Mumbai, over 100,000 women work as prostitutes in the notorious red light district around Grant and Falkland Roads. Around 50,000 women and children have been trafficked from neighbouring countries. 15,000 of the prostitutes are children. In 1997, only 1% of the prostitutes in the area were thought to be HIV+. Now, the figure is estimated at around 70%, but could be much higher.

With mountains of rat infested rubbish, stinking open sewers and cages where the pimps and brothel madams exhibit the girls and women forced to work for them, the red light area is grim. Many of the girls and women have few skills and therefore little hope of escaping, although they yearn to leave.

Tearfund Partner Oasis runs the Aruna Project, working through local churches to bring God’s love to the prostitutes, pimps and brothel madams of Mumbai through practical action motivated by Christian faith. Aruna means “Bright Morning Sun” – a name chosen because the project workers hope that their efforts will bring a ray of hope in the dark world of the Red Light District. Oasis’s Aruna Drop In Centre provides help to girls in the area in health, education for their children and counsel on how to leave the trade. Visiting brothels, establishing relationships with brothel keepers and the girls in prostitution are all part of the work. The drop in centre also functions as a night shelter for the girl children of prostitutes. The Oasis Aruna Half Way Home is a bridge between the red-light area and the rest of society. Here the women – and their children - are given a place of security, identity and belonging. They are granted opportunities to acquire new skills and are given guidance and counselling, the primary objective being rehabilitation and reintegration in the society.

This year, Radio Cracker will support the Aruna Project as they provide a health clinic providing access to medical and counselling support, and also run basic education courses for women and their children, including vocational support for women wishing to leave prostitution. The funds will also assist about 40 women to use the Half Way Home facility.

Mission Africa

It is estimated that every day, 6,000 people die from AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and by 2010 there will be about 40 million AIDS orphans in that area. In Nigeria, Mission Africa has set up the “Spring of Life” centre in the grounds of Evangel Hospital, Jos to provide care and counselling to both victims of AIDS and their families. This, along with an AIDS orphans fund, is bringing hope to many people who thought they had none. Another Mission Africa project supported by Radio Cracker over the past number of years is the provision of wheelchairs for victims of polio in Nigeria. These specially adapted wheelchairs are manufactured in a small workshop in Jos, employing 9 local people, giving them a means to support their families, as well as helping the polio victims to get around more easily.

This year, Radio Cracker will continue to support the work of Mission Africa with a donation towards their work with HIV/AIDS victims and also the manufacture of wheelchairs in the workshop in Nigeria.

Smiles Foundation

Money sent out from Radio Cracker raised during 2004 went towards the building of a Children’s Centre in Gepiu, Romania. As there is no secondary school in the village, very often parents cannot afford to send their children to school after the age of 11, and this merely serves to continue the cycle of poverty. Smiles Foundation hopes to change that situation with this centre. A young couple, Mihai and Adriana Ciopasiu, run the centre along with a couple of helpers, providing an after school club for the children as well as teaching them job skills. The old folk in the village are also provided with a hot meal a couple of nights per week, often served by the children themselves.

This year, Radio Cracker will help The Smiles Foundation to continue the excellent work going on in Gepiu, as they extend the agricultural project at the Centre. The children are encouraged to help grow vegetables and other crops and keep livestock, all of which are used in the various Smiles projects in the area. This will mean that less money will have to be spent buying food in the market, and more ploughed back into the Centre, leading to a position of self sufficiency.

Emmanuel Hospitals

Radio Cracker gives ongoing support to Priya Hospital in India, with its Ballymena Wing. India has approximately 25% of the world’s blind population, and the Priya Hospital specializes in cataract operations, which can be carried out for as little as £27. Imagine, only £27 to give someone back their sight! In 2005, over 8,500 people were treated for eye problems in the Emmanuel Hospital facilities.

Many of the facilities in the Emmanuel Hospitals are rundown and in need of upgrading. Last year, funds from Radio Cracker helped to renovate a ward and operating theatre at Madhipura Hospital, where patient numbers had trebled in the past few years.

This year, Radio Cracker will provide support to both the Priya Hospital as before, and another Emmanuel Hospital unit in Fatehpur, India to upgrade the staff accommodation block.

Gateway Medical Alliance (Morocco)

In February 2004, an earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale struck Northern Morocco. Thousands of people were forced to leave their shattered homes and live in tents. Some existed like this over two winters, through rain and snow. The most vulnerable, the widows and elderly lacked the resources to rebuild their homes and lives. There have been 3 teams of men from Ballymena who have gone out to Morocco with Gateway Medical Alliance to help with the rebuilding, and they have returned to Northern Ireland with a commitment to assist in the ongoing work.

This year, funds from Radio Cracker will help build another physical therapy centre for disabled children on the north coast of Morocco. It is estimated that about 10% of Morocco’s 32 million population has a disability of some kind. In that culture, disability brings shame on the whole family, and especially the mother. Therefore the goal of the centre is to bring hope – physical, emotional, social and spiritual hope – to the entire family, and ultimately to the entire community. This centre will employ and train young North African women to be physical therapy assistants.

Tearfund (Uganda)

During two decades of civil war in Northern Uganda, more than 20,000 children have been kidnapped and trafficked by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) to work as sex slaves, soldiers and porters. Many of these children were seized from temporary camps, where their families sought refuge after fleeing from their village. During the war, northern Uganda's night commuters were infamous: young children walked miles each night to sleep in the relative safety of a town, to avoid being abducted from the camps. At the height of the crisis, Tearfund's partner Noah's Ark ran a shelter for thousands of these children in the town of Gulu. Now the work of Noah's Ark is shifting focus to helping these former night commuters adapt to peace and overcome the longer-lasting emotional and spiritual effects of trafficking.

Funds from Radio Cracker this year will help Noah’s Ark continue to provide shelter for all those children who require it in the Gulu area, assist orphaned children into foster homes where there is no wider family to care for them, and help local families access education and basic healthcare to mitigate the impact of war, the HIV epidemic and the trauma experienced by the communities in Northern Uganda.

© 2007 :: Radio Cracker :: All Rights Reserved       (Charity Ref No. XR30238)