Asha for Education

Project Brief: School providing remedial education and health camps to children in rural communities of landless farmers, daily laborers, coolies and brickfield workers. Asha focuses on higher education of girls and helped fund building of an educational center.
Project Type: Community Based Interventions (description)
Primary Focus: remedial education (description)

Secondary Focus: health and cleanliness

Area: Rural
Supporting Chapter Contact:
NYC/NJ

Status: CLOSED - ENDED
Project Steward: Rigi Philip
Co-Steward: Agamoni Pia Majumdar
Project Partner(s): Rekha Sarkar
Project Address: Sarada Kalyan Bhandar
Sector F/1
Sarat Pally, West Bengal 721 101
Tel: (011)-(91)-03222-63866
Stewarding Chapter: NYC/NJ

The community which Sarada Kalyan Bhandar (SKB) serves is one of landless farmers, daily laborers, coolies, and brickfield workers; the children come from families where the average monthly income is around Rs.700. The government schools in the area suffer from a scarcity of teachers, adding to the lack of motivation among students to attend school.

Sarada Kalyan Bhandar (SKB) started over 25 years ago as an after-hours school program where children are motivated to review their class/homework and to attend school regularly. Through sustained work over a decade, the pass percentages in classes have increased dramatically from 30% to over 95% in recent years.

This program still continues strong with increasing community support. Over the years, SKB has added more initiatives that include the funding of higher education for women and providing medical care for the villages which it serves. It also seeks to increase the number of villages that it supports.

Asha has been supporting this work for over 10 years. In 2005, the Work an Hour fundraiser helped raise over $7,000 to help build what is now the center of all of SKB's activities. This building hosts supplementary education classes, medical training camps and vocational training of students.

Here is a list of the subset of SKB initiatives supported by Asha:

1) Higher education of women
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Asha supports the Women Self-independence Promoting Scheme, an SKB project supporting the higher education of women. This project supports the education, lodging and living expenses of young women pursuing a Bachelor's or Master's degree.

In this community, women traditionally sacrified their dreams of pursuing a career in favour of male family members, mainly due to social and economic pressures. This is one step towards educating more women and also battling the social prejudice against educated and independent women.

To donate towards the education of a young woman, visit the Asha Support-a-Child website:
http://www.ashanet.org/nycnj/projects/sac/projects/skb.html

2) Supplementary education
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SKB aims to create a better educational environment to motivate illiterate children towards education and learning by providing them with study materials.

SKB provides additional incentives which mean much in this community. Students are provided with uniforms which give them a sense of identity and pride, and make their schoolgoing experience more formal. All attending children are also provided with bread and biscuits everyday, and milk is provided on 4 out of 7 days.

3) Medical camps
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On the health front, SKB hosts camps to provide awareness, testing and treatment of medical conditions. Villagers are trained in first-aid responses to conditions such as shock, drowning, burns and snakebite, while women are trained in how to care for a sick child.
Tuberculosis and malaria are prevalent diseases in the area; SKB tests for these diseases and provides immunization against them.