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Many families in the area lack basic education and skills, and suffer from various cultural and social problems, which keep them locked in a continuous cycle of poverty. Like many rural villages in India, Purkal and the surrounding villages struggle to survive on a low, single income and have little capacity to improve their situation.
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Parents are poorly educated and children are often first generation students. They do not have access to properly managed schools, good role models or support services and as a result, lack the motivation and opportunity for a better life. The community understands the value of schooling and enrollment is near 100%, but substandard government education and intellectual deprivation ensure continued backwardness. The system leaves them without basic language, math and science skills. Therefore, they cannot survive within the competitive job market of India's rapidly expanding economy
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Poor children have also to accept learning in Hindi, while the children of the elite of the country, including those who argue in favour of Hindi, send their children to English medium schools. Hindi medium schools are often poorly managed and children leave with little skill and knowledge to compete for good jobs. This policy has hindered upward mobility and denied access to good education for these children.
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The fact that the possession of certain skills is the basis of ones ‘ability to earn’ is not well understood. Skill building by individual members is therefore not targeted. Growth of the physical and the emotional happens in an aimless, pointless manner and as a result there is underachievement in the case of most individuals.
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Another significant problem these children face is poor nutrition and medical care to enable them to concentrate and physically develop properly. Children are also deprived of necessary immunizations and are prone to disease. Some of these village families are so poor that they must take turns eating every other day; families often survive on rice and bread, which is hardly nutritious. Due to poor education on part of the parent, there is lack of quality care to a child in its early years of schooling and poor stimulation of the senses of imagination, curiosity and enquiry among the young. Many children suffer from malnutrition and poor early childhood development.
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