<b>Voluntary Health Association of Tripura (VHAT)</b><br><br>
VHAT has completed another year of its journey towards the promotion of health and environment status, primary education, empowerment of the downtrodden, gender equity and promotion of care and support for the children in need. The whole year 2005-06 was extremely challenging for VHAT. On the hand working for the children in need of care, support and protection claimed huge endeavour and in other there was no support from the financial institution. The survey on child violence in Tripura done by VHAT revealed that the percentage of child labour in this state is very high in comparison to national figure.<br><br>This year VHAT gave more emphasis for supporting disabled children for which the help from DDRC is worth to be mentioned. The need for the mentally challenged or CP children is almost unaddressed. During the year, VHAT faced difficulty to provide the quality eye care due to lack of proper technical personnel, but ultimately could recover from this at the end of the year and again started the service in full fledged form in VHAT Eye Hospital as well as in remote rural areas through organizing community health screening camps.<br><br>Implementing the awareness generation activities against trafficking and sexual violence on children and women throughout the state would not be possible without help from the networking member organizations. Environmental orientation to the school children was one of the intensive endeavours taken up this year with the help from Toyota Motor Corporation. VHAT organized one state level, eight district level and 94 block/panchayat level workshops throughout the State.<br><br>The Khoj Project in absolutely tribal belt of Rupaichhari block is running with its equal momentum and the community participation increasing gradually to make this project for primary education sustainable. Under this programme, various activities were undertaken like 1) primary health service, 2) primary education 3) extracurricular activities includes – Role of health messengers, school health activity, cultural activities, sports, games, physical exercise and yoga; 4) Horticultural activity and 5) animal rearing <br><br>VHAT has been implementing IEC project for promotion of Indian Systems of Medicine and Homoepoathy(ISM&H) with financial assistance from the Deptt. of AYUSH, MoHFW. This project is being implemented in collaboration with two FNGOs, namely Bidyasagar Samaj Kalyan Sangsad and Ratanmani Community Action Society in two Blocks of Jirania R.D. and Satchand R.D. Various awareness programmes on ISM&H were organized in these blocks.<br><br>Efforts of voluntary sector in Tripura need to get much more attention and importance from government and the developmental agencies to provide them support. VHAT has developed a good rapport with various Civil Society Organisations and Government Deptts. VHAT trained resource persons took sessions on various health & development related topics in the programmes organized by other organizations during the year.