Asha for Education

Secondary Focus: other

Total = $33310

The Ankur project sends children from the urban slums of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad to the Ankur school located in Pune, where they receive formal education. This project is in collaboration with a social organization called Swadhar in Pune. The children come from families of varied backgrounds such as daily laborers, rag pickers, sweepers, and unemployed families.

Asha supports the education of 35 children through the Support A Child program.

Swadhar has a branch called Akshardeep that runs non formal schools to help "out-ofschool" children (viz. dropouts) get back into the regular school system. Asha Zurich is supporting 10 non formal educaiton schools in the Pimpri-Chinchwad area. The Ankur project, also known as Akshardeep-Ankur is a proposal to individually sponsor at risk children from Akshardeep's schools, to integrate them into mainstream education and improve their chances of completing school. The kids are selected based on two criteria – their potential (how well they are doing in school and how motivated they are), and based on whether they might have difficulties coping with a Corporation school (children from very poor families, children who are from outside Maharashtra and cannot follow the Marathi medium of instruction in government schools).