Florence Home Foundation
Girls Hostel in Semakottai
The main activity of Florence Home Foundation is to help children of Tamil Nadu to access food, to have a shelter and to attend school.
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These 3 points are basic basic human rights but too often, in this rural area, children cannot even access those rights.

They are often left by their parents for financial reasons, due to the sex of the child - indeed, the system of the dowry makes girls a heavy financial load for the parents- or with a situation of total destitution since many families are without incomes except for those coming from charity, they are living in unhealthy huts or in the street.
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The children can also have been given up by their parents or driven to run away because of the scission of their family or because of domestic violence.
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CHILDREN CENTERS
Therefore, the NGO FHF built two Children Home for street and slum children, in order to protect them and give them the chance to stay in the education system.
The girls center of FHF was created in 2007, the main purpose being to help girls from poor families to attend school. Unfortunately, in an area consisting of about twenty villages, there is only one school available to children.
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Additionally, there is no transportation available to these students. As a result, the young girls are forced to walk for more than five kilometers to get to school. As a safety precaution, they are also forced to walk as a group.
Due to these difficulties, the failure rate in school is quite high, and most of the students drop out of the education system at a young age.
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Aware of these problems, FHF, aided by Dutch donator Tony Brands, built the center for girls in Semakottai, a village that is not far from the school. This center provides food for the girls and is completely free for them.
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Today, thirty girls between the ages of 10 and 16 live in the hostel full time and attend school every day.They are aided by a live-in cook as well as a full time warden. These girls have been selected by FHF according to the difficult context they were living in. In the Rural Children Home, they eat as much as they need, attend school, learn how to grow vegetables, and live the life young girls need to have.
Boys Hostel in Killai
When the Tsunami affected the Tamil Nadu in 2004, Florence Home Foundation got involve in the relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction of activities with the support of Emmaus International.
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During that rehabilitation, FHF ran a Child Development centre in a temporary shed at Muzhukkuthurai, 1 km away from our administrative office in Cuddalore. 23 children below 5 years old were enrolled in the centre. Two young teachers took care of them.
Then in 2007 FHF started to construct a permanent child development centre in Killai with the support of Emmaus International and Foundation De France.
The same children at Muzhukkuthurai as well as the tribal community children were the beneficiaries of this Child Development Centre.
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Today 25 boys between 6 and 17 years old live full time in the center. As for the girls hostel, they were chosen among poor broken families. The center is close to a school and all the boys attend school everyday.
They can also enjoy food provided by a cook working for the hostel, and develop their skills in various sports.
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Both centers have accommodations to receive guest who wish to spend time with children or just visit the region.
If you are interested, please find out more about our programs of Volunteering and Eco Tourism.