Facebook drive brings in rain gear for poor kids

Panaji, July 6 (IANS) The severe monsoon of Goa will now not hold back over 200 children from poor families from attending school.

Thanks to a civil society initiative, the students from an open school have been given rainwear and umbrellas, collected with the help of a Facebook-led donation drive, 'The Umbrella Project'.

"The idea was to help under-privileged children get to school during the rain. We used Facebook to leverage the idea. This was the first time we tried it," Millisha Silveira, who anchored the initiative, told IANS Friday.

"We received around 200 umbrellas and rainwear which donors dropped at the Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry office that served as a collection centre."

The umbrellas and rainwear were donated to the Loyola National Open School in Navelim village, 45 km from here, where students from underprivileged background study.

"Often it is a problem to coax children from slums to go to school during rain. And in Goa, it rains for days on end. They cannot afford to buy rainwear and you also cannot blame them if they cannot make it to school. So the rain gear really helps," open school headmaster Krishnanand Desai said.