A home for children with leprosy in India
Leprosy is a disease still present in some regions in the world. Unfortunately in many Asian nations continues to cause many deaths. Children whose parents have leprosy are rejected from the society and are forced to live outside the cities without adequate aid and in conditions of great hardship that will significantly affect their health. We have decided to finance and support the building of a house in Central India that can accommodate 150 children. In this house the kids can be cared for and receive a proper school education with the help of qualified medical stuff and volunteer teachers. This will allow them to leave the leprosy colonies and gradually be reintegrated in the society.

Help for Refugees
More than 11 million people from Syria have been forced to flee their homes and about half of them are children. The United Nations as well as the european host countries are struggling with the challenges of the refugee streams. The situation is tense and very sensitive. There is a lack of the most basic necessities such as shelter, food and clothing. Life Share Helps is directly involved with different partner organizations in offering emergency relief and in the distribution of food, clothes in different refugee camps.

Farming and Family Projects in Madagascar

In Madagascar, 80% of the people live in rural areas and are therefore involved in agriculture and animal husbandry. Much of the land is still unexploited or poorly used (slash and burn). Food security is becoming increasingly difficult and will get worse in the coming years with climate change, political instability and economic uncertainty. In order to help our nation we decided to focus on agro-ecology projects and model what people could do in the field of agriculture, livestock and fish farming. In the long term we hope to see people working together through cooperatives that will help them to get train, sell their product at a fair price and enable them to have easier access to basic education for their children, quality health care and a better standard of living for their community. In Madagascar most families are broken therefore parent training programs are essential to see family relationships restored and improve healthy resource management. In order to achieve these goals, we see that we need to work on:

  • Develop a model farm, so that people can see what works in our region and how to replicate it.
  • Raise awareness of this model with different people around us who can go into the bush and follow the target people, or target community.
  • Put in place practical training on the technical level so that people learn to use practices that will be more effective and appropriate to their situation but also equip parents on the relational and management level so that relationships within the family and community are strengthened.
  • Providing good quality seeds to ensure better yields for farmers.
  • Follow-up and support for individuals or communities practicing the model.
  • Help them to organize themselves, put them in cooperatives, help them to have common structures in order to protect the harvest and sell it at a better price.

Center for children and women in need
There are still many places in the world where children grow up in poverty and abuse. In the heart of India live the ethnic groups of the Banchhara and Bedia, where thousands of women, following an ancient hindu tradition, are involved in prostitution. Families force their daughters from an early age to follow the destiny of their mothers. Most of the men are addicted to alcohol and many children are abandoned on the road. Some friends working in partnership with Life Share Network had the courage and the strength to bring a change in this situation. A center has been opened to host children and women who wish to start a new life in hope and freedom.

Balkan support
Romania and Bulgaria are among the countries with the poorest populations in Europe. Thousands of people live in ghettos and shanty towns in disgusting conditions and are excluded from society. In these communities, the custom of early marriages is widespread (even before the age of 10-12!!!). Illiteracy and school drop-outs are highly prevalent. Very few children in these communities finish primary school. Because of these factors, there is poverty and lack of family responsibility and children and adolescents grow up in a context of domestic violence. Most girls by the age of 18 have already been married, at least twice, and have one or two children. Usually people in these communities do not think and plan for their future, what is important to them is the present and having food, clothes and warm houses. In addition to these problems we see many cases of addiction to alcohol, smoking and drugs. Many rely on theft or begging in Western countries to survive.
Life Share Italia APS supports projects in which we provide underprivileged children with help to attend school (with afternoon support courses) and their families with some of the necessary items such as food, clothing and basic sanitary items. During the cold months we support soup kitchens run by local partners in the most deprived neighbourhoods to offer children a hot meal once a day.

Poverty and social exclusion in Europe
Europe is going through extraordinarily difficult times. The short term impacts of Covid19 on people’s lives as well as the economy are disastrous, and the long term effects are still unknown. Millions of people’s jobs, income and living standards are at risk, whilst faced with rising costs, rents and bills. The progress we have seen in recent years on poverty reduction in Europe is under threat. Without strong and decisive action, more people throughout Europe risk being pulled into poverty. This is why we need both short term and long term actions to help workers, families and children. Life Share Helps has responded to the needs of vulnerable or marginalized groups in Europe for almost 20 years, adapting its work in order to support children and family at risk. Our volunteers provide soup kitchens, hygiene kits, assistance to the elderly, including a dedicated telephone line and community support services.