Education India Project #18618

Educate street children in rural India

by Snehalaya 'Home of Love'

Project Report | Jan 8, 2018
Empowering girls in slums

By Joyce Connolly | Honorary Director

Over 100 slum girls have attended Malala workshops

Happy new year and thank you for all of your support in 2017. We had a busy year and you can view the highlights from across all of projects below. We hope to have just as successful 2018 and hope you do too.

The first part of our year will see the continuation of our Educate. Empower. Lead. program. Until July we are focusing on improving the prospects for girls in receiving equal access to education in our third partnership with Malala Fund. Our aim is to empower girls aged 13-17 to understand and advocate for their rights to education and prevent the commercial sexual exploitation of children through education.

We may be taking a #StandWithMalala but we certainly aren't standing still when it comes to improving the educational prospects and aspirations of girls. Our campaign, has got off to a flying start with a full program of activities in our slum community centers. Over the past two months, over 100 girls from seven of our city slums have been enjoying workshops and activities aimed at improve their rights to education with the aim of preventing the commercial exploitation of children (CSEC).

Our program has included workshops on growing up and sex education, human, women’s and children’s rights and the law, gender equality, girls’ education and further information about how one girl, Malala Youszafi, has made a difference to girls’ education worldwide. The intention is to inspire and empower our girls to follow Malala’s lead to improve the state of their own education. As well as inviting prominent experts in their field to deliver the workshops, our own fieldworkers from Childline and our education projects have shared their insights and expertise helping our beneficiaries to better understand the dangers and risks that a full education can help prevent.

We want our children to play an active role in this program and are giving them the opportunity to feedback on each activity to see what is working well for them and where we can improve our program. We have been blown away by some of the intelligent and insightful responses we are receiving and are making sure that all of the participants comments are listened to, acted upon and fed back to them. One example is that when it was noted that boys should have been represented at our gender equality session, we immediately planned another day of activities where girls and boys were required to work together in teams. It was pitched as a day full of fun but also successfully demonstrated the differences in strengths and abilities between the genders.

Other highlights have included a talk from our founder, Girish Kulkarni, explaining how the foundations of Snehalaya are firmly rooted in education equality and hearing from a sex worker not only about how her own life choices were restricted by limited education but how Snehalaya has since given her the confidence and opportunities to develop into a leadership role as a social worker. Our girls’ education workshop asked what are the restrictions faced by those living in slums and some of the resulting issues and the girls’ own solutions to them were addressed to key influencers such as the State Education Minister. We intend to post these letters and also allow the girls to ask the same questions through other channels such as social media and our community radio station.

This is just the start of our program, we have committed to reach over 3,600 girls throughout our district and we will continue to empower girls through education in our red-light areas and other communities within our district and beyond, all of which complements our mission to continue to ensure there are no underage sex workers in our district and to protect those at risk of trafficking and exploitation.

Thank you for your support in ensuring we continue our work with slum dwellers that enables us to bring targeted campaigns like this to empower them further.

The girls come from seven of our city slums

The girls have also been managing the events

Asking girls for feedback improves the program

Girls record what they learn in Malala notebooks

Links:

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Oct 9, 2017
Stand with us

By Joyce Connolly | Honorary Director

Our team re-enrolls school drop outs in our slums

We have fantastic news. For the third time we are taking a stand #WithMalala in the Malala Fund’s Educate. Empower. Lead. campaign to promote girls’ education to help reduce the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC).

This is great recognition of the work we already carry out in slum and red-light communities thanks to your generous support. We were compelled to start our slum schools as we know that these are the breeding grounds for opportunists and traffickers and we are reaping the rewards as hundreds of children each year receive the extra tuition and support that enables them to complete their education and make informed choices about their own futures. With 75% of the female sex workers we work with being illiterate, it’s plain to see that education has a huge role to play in changing the destinies of slum children.

Educate. Empower. Lead. will allow us to engage with more of them, specifically girls aged 13-17, at risk or victims of CSEC, to inspire them to stand up for their rights to be educated. We will also empower them to challenge the barriers to equality in education and give them the forum to advocate for it with key influencers and decision makers.

Through workshops and roadshows, we will reach out to even more slum communities and red-light areas to educate and empower children through teaching them about their rights, the laws that protect them and the importance of equal access to learning. We will also create a network of children to advocate for their own rights in the hope that they will become future leaders in ensuring every child has the opportunity to achieve their full academic potential. We’ll also be promoting and opening up opportunities for further and higher education and vocational training including those available through our own projects, such as our new bedside nursing and agricultural technology training courses.

We are hoping to reach many more girls like Pia and Ria. The sisters were orphaned when Pia was 10 and were forced to live on the streets of Pune, a large city, three hours’ drive from Ahmednagar. With little education, Pia was lured into marriage by a brothel keeper who also forced her younger sister to marry another pimp. Fortunately, we found them and brought them to our shelter home where they both received emotional support and were enrolled in school. Pia also trained in our onsite kitchen and is now a professional cook, while Riya is completing her 12th standard. With your support, we can reach out to rescue more children like Pia and Riya and help them to realise their full potential through vocational training and education.

Why your support is vital NOW!

There was a 20% rise of women and children trafficked in India in 2016
Only 7% of trafficked girls and women are rescued
80% of trafficked Indians are women and girls forced into commercial sex work
75,000 children in Maharashtra, a large proportion of them girls don’t attend school

Thank you for standing with us and allowing us to continue our work with children in slums that is giving us international recognition as experts in preventing CSEC.

Uneducated girls are easy prey to opportunists

Thanks to our work & your support

Education gives girls brighter futures

Links:

Visit our website

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Jul 12, 2017
Happy Malala Day!

By Joyce Connolly | Honorary Director

We stood #WithMalala

As part of the celebrations to honour the work of education activist, Malala Youszafi, we’re pleased to tell you that all donations made to our project today are eligible for 50% match-funding, meaning for every $1 donated we receive $1.50!

Our organisation and projects are rooted in campaigning and acting to empower children at risk and education plays a key role in this. When as a teenager, our founder Girish approached female sex workers to ask how he could help them they pointed to their children. Resigned to their own fates they wanted better for them, they wanted them to have the education that they had missed out on in the hope that it would give them brighter futures.

From that day, when Girish started Snehalaya by teaching two children, education has been at the heart of our work in tackling the broader issues, such as commercial sexual exploitation of children, facing our society. As a donor to our cause we know you believe in the value and power of education. We established our Balbhavan projects to stop slums from being the recruitment grounds for pimps and brothel keepers and we are proud to report that by promoting ad providing educational support there are no longer underage sex workers in our district. Previously too many girls like Deepa, orphaned when her mother died of a HIV-related illness, were forced into prostitution. She was 15 when we rescued her from a brothel and re-enrolled her in school, today she is a fully-trained nurse.

“Educate a girl and you educate a whole community”
Malala Youszafi

Through last year’s #StandwithMalala campaign we reached a staggering 27,000 people, including the uneducated girls and local leaders in the city slums you are supporting. One of the girls who joined us on the Malala campaign trail to share her story is Saba. She lives in a predominantly Muslim slum with her widowed mother and four siblings. When her father’s family started applying pressure on her to get married it was our team she approached. As our staff are drawn from and based in these communities they are best placed to understand and address culturally sensitive issues and provide solutions. They counselled and helped Saba convince her family that she should be allowed to pursue her dream of studying engineering. She has just entered her second year of a degree course and has become our own personal Malala, a peer mentor inspiring others to stand up for their rights to a full education.

Thanks also to you, last year our team was able to conduct 4,505 home and 2,100 school visits to help more girls like Saba. They also identified and counselled 50 school drop-outs to return to education, helped another 308 pupils with their admissions to good schools and colleges and awarded 130 of our brightest evening class students scholarships of financial support for education materials.

There are still many more children who need our support, stand with Malala and Snehalaya today and help us to give them 150%.

We helped Deepa become a nurse

Saba shared her story with 27,000 people

Links:

Visit our website

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