Educate street children in rural India

Meet Nikita

Our teachers understand how hard it has been to find and bring our students to school so going that extra mile to put a smile on our students faces is something they love to do. Listen to Nikita's story.

Nikita was just 3 when our Childline Team found at a railway station. Now 10 Nikita joins in but from a distance and has difficulty listening to her teachers. Reshma one of Nikita’s teacher won her trust and build a bond describing how she too had lost her mother at an early. She gently gave her tips on her behaviour that she could interpret in her own way and Nikita started interacting with her classmates. The difference is pronounced, Nikita’s confidence is grown, she follows the school rules, and has improved her marks. She recently gave a presentation to 300 students and teachers! 

Thank you for supporting girls like Nikita 

Girls Education

Primary education has undergone immense progress in the last 15yrs to be almost universally available. The state of secondary education in India, particularly for girls remains troublesome. Our school doors and slum drop in centres centres now provide free education to over 4000 children with girl education a priority focus. 

A local government scheme Bhagyashree Yojana provides all girls free education up to 12th Standard (A-Level/SAT equivalent) however still only 2% of girls in India complete secondary education, only 47% even start it.  Often these girls are from deprived, isolated and minority sections of society, such as nomadic tribes and scheduled castes, who are far removed from education. Reasons include child marriages, child labour, sex trafficking and health issues and early pregnancies.

Laying the groundwork is vital - making spaces and opportunities to discuss girls’ education directly in the communities where girls are at high risk is key. Last month we launched our Stand #WithMalala Roadshow going all over our district to spread the word about how important educating girls is in creating an equal and progressive society. Not only are we screening Malala’s movie in Hindi in makeshift cinemas we are organising street plays, rallies and debates on the issues girls face in getting mainstream secondary education. The response has been overwhelming with community leaders, children and their parents turning up to commit to keep their girls in education. Read more about how we plan to reach 30,000 girls in the next 2 months here

Recent Progress

• It is inspiring how seriously our students take their personal development and education. Studiously revising for the State Board exams. To encourage them we turned to technology using Skype to connect to an educational counsellor, guest lecturers and exceptional local teachers across their 9 study subjects.
• We offer homework clubs and mock examinations with Smart Education to give our students invaluable insights into exam conditions to build their confidence ahead of the exam period.
• We are growing our teacher and school international partnerships with Connecting Classrooms – a British Council initiative (see our blog) 
• Our teachers also enjoyed a one week intensive teacher training course locally with a monthly follow up session to monitor their progress.
• Last month a huge recruitment initiative for the next academic year was a great success with nearly 200 new students expressing an interest in joining our school. This helps securing future funding and continues to build our network of education forward citizens.

Giving Education is the BEST GIFT

Education is vital in breaking the crippling cycles of poverty and empowers self belief that is unsurpassable. A regular donation of £22/month can ensure a child is enrolled mainstream school and provided with all the resources needed to study.

In India a teachers monthly salary is £70. Just £70 to teach a whole classroom of children for a month. 

Please consider if a regular donation of any amount is possible. We will do the rest!

2016 looks set to be our best yet for education.  Our projects are doing well and we have even branched out into Ladies only Driving Lessons.  A little round up of news from our IT centre, our school, in our slum educational projects....

Developments In Our Projects

• Gearing up for adolescents – school extended to teaching 6^th Standard
• Raising survivors to be leaders – a focus on moving past horrifying histories

World Class

• Snehalaya invited to work for Girls Education with Malala in India
• School Principal is published in Times Educational Supplement twice! and brings her teachers to train in UK schools

Innovative Education through PLAY

• Pre-schoolers world’s first Interactive Language Learning playground to launches at Snehalaya
• Grackle app supports self taught language for 7000 6-12year olds
• Toybank expands to 9 slums – Play for all

Upcoming Schemes

• Texas teams up 20 educationalists to spend a month in our projects

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This report is jam packed with good news.  So much we reckon you should get the kettle on and come back with a biscuit or two, ready for a good round up!...Sitting comfortably?

Raising survivors to be leaders – a focus on moving past horrifying histories - More then anything when working with high-risk children from tribal, slum, low income and health burdened backgrounds we have to be informed and sensitive to the case histories of our children.  We cannot shy away from where they have come from and our approach to education is on personal development more then results and attainment.  We listen, counsel and support children to heal.  Take Durga – she witnessed her mother be set on fire and die in front of her, by her father.  With nurturing and one on one support Durga is re-learning trust and that she can be loved here.  She is getting there and shows clear aptitude and ability in her studies.  She is succeeding in her own personal development and the grades we are certain will follow.

Snehalaya brings Malala and Girls Education to India - Who doesn’t love Malala and all she stands for?  Our tribute #gala4malala event at Mumbai Uni in November was packed out with politicians, NGO heads, students, activists, & girls.  All kinds of girls from all walks of life came together in to speak about their lives and the need for access to secondary education to a crowd of over 1800 people.  The Snehalaya run event was splashed all over the news – internationally.  We also held numerous special free screenings across Maharashtra without a spare seat in the house! Next is to take Hindi version of Malala’s movie in road show across our district to slum communities, schools and remote villages to open a debate directly with girls in their communities where it counts. Sabah Ali is our Indian Malala, she fought hard to be educated and with our Slum education programs is now in higher education studying engineering, she is one of only 2% of the girls that complete high school in India.  47% never in make secondary education.  Sabah spoke and inspired the crowd at the Mumbai event talking of her difficulties in convincing people she should study because she was a girl and because she was a Muslim.  For all the Sabah’s we are delighted to be bringing the important message of every girls right to education right in the communities and villages where the conversation needs to happen. 

Principal published in Times Educational Supplement, brings her teachers to UK third year running – with the support of the British Council connecting classrooms scheme and a strong drive for social change, principle Pratiba Khengre has become an unstoppable force for our English School.  She was published last month in the TES and during her three year reign she has actively recruited specific pupils and teachers to build an inclusive school community free from the usual prejudice and stigma surrounding HIV and sex workers. A unique school needs a unique approach and Pratiba places sex ed firmly on the agenda saying

Pratiba is somewhat of an anomaly herself, her husband a successful vet moved to support her career desire to work in this sector and is often seen serving the food to guests and other ‘non male’ roles by Indian standards.  

'It is hard to get middle-income families to agree to have their children taught with HIV children.  It is harder to get teachers keen to progress their career to work with us, so being able to offer international opportunities and to pilot innovative learning schemes is great at drawing the progressive staff this school needs to recruit.  Partnering with International schools to give my teachers their own learning support networks is a great incentive for then'. 

This year Pratiba will partner with 20 Texan teaching students and 3 professors from A&M University in Texas USA to give her staff and students one to one conversational English practise and to develop a world view from their visitors. 

Toybank expands to 9 slums – Play for all – after piloting this Mumbai’s scheme in our school we are delighted to be taking a toy library to our more rural regions.  Toybank offers a great moderated play scheme - teaching street kids how to respect possessions through access to educational toys in our toy library.  Children can learn to play together without worrying over ‘ownership’ and can even loan items to take home.

Pre-schoolers interactive AV playground launches at Snehalaya - Under 5’s learn best through play and movement in amongst their peers navigating the world.  Attention spans for static desk-work are not developed and we all know boredom kills learning potential.  We are thrilled to have teamed up with Child Tuition (Holland) to unveil and showcase the much-awaited Nicotopia – An innovative educational playground that has been stringently developed in Holland in a 5 year R&D program seeks to give 2-6 year olds conversational English while they play! This fully interactive, unassisted play zone does not require teachers or adults in anyway. Targeting to 2-6 year olds, this playground has 4 stations and many physical challenges that mean in playing 30 children can, fully unaided, learn English and social navigational skills, irrespective of sharing the same mother tongue.  We can’t say much more until the unveil in Autumn, it with 1500 words, 2000 sentences and 20 songs it is a language game-changer set to become a great teaching aid.

 Grackle app supports self taught language for 7000 6-12year olds – Another Child Tuition developed piece of kit is already doing well at our school.  This screen-based game allows children to find their own way into learning English through 166 games designed specifically for Indian children.  Grackle is popping up in ‘hole in the wall’ kiosks and in school computer labs across India.  Snehalaya are delighted to use it as a learning aid, especially as it is intuitive – meaning our teachers can enjoy a study break themselves while the kids get to have fun playing and learning at a screen.

THANKS FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT IT COSTS £544 TO SPONSOR A CHILDS EDUCATION THROUGH OUR SCHOOL, SLUM BASED, IT CENTRE PROJECTS TO FIND OUT MORE PLEASE EMAIL give@snehalaya.org

Links:

• Special Thank You Video