Asha for Education

Project Brief: Providing basic education to poor, deprived and vulnerable children in slums of Delhi
Project Type: Alternative Education (description)
Primary Focus: children from slums (description)

Secondary Focus: other

Area: Urban
Supporting Chapter Contact: Frankfurt

Status: current / ongoing
Project Steward: Rohini Muthuswami
Project Partner(s): Aparna Concern For Humanity
Other Contacts:
Project Address: , IInd Floor, Building No. 252/1,Shahpur Jat,New Delhi,
Delhi  110049
Tel: 0119810345783
Stewarding Chapter: Frankfurt

In the south side of Delhi, the road starting from Chhattarpur and extending upto Bhatti Mines is surrounded on both sides by small villages/ slums/ colonies which are primarily dominated by families who are extremely poor. Although the location of this area is very much in the heart of Delhi but the socio economic condition of the people living here is very poor. Most of these families are migrants from states such as Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Uttar Pradesh. Here, they work as daily wage earners, as rag pickers or do menial jobs. They do not have a permanent place to live but live on squatters, in thatched huts or in rented accommodations. The area does not have any local opportunities for livelihood and so the adults travel off to Mehrauli or towards Faridabad for earning. For children, some of them go out to work and contribute to the family kitty, some accompany their parents to the work place, others look after their siblings or do household chores and the remaining largely spent the entire day on the streets playing cards, marbles, or abusing each other. Most of these children do not go to schools. The reason is that they are not welcomed in the government schools because of their poor habits, their uncivilized language and behaviour. A large majority of these children are in the age group of 4 - 14 years and they exist in big numbers. Many of these children were once enrolled in formal schools but because of the reasons mentioned above, they dropped out of schools. Besides these children, there are large number of girl children who were never enrolled in schools because their parents did not want them to be exposed to education. These mostly include girl children of minority community and girl children of migrated families.

The other problem is of the high drop out rate of children from formal schools. This includes all those children whose names have been striked out from the class registers and all such children whose names might be there on the attendance register of the schools but they never go there physically. The most common reasons for the drop out of mainstreamed children are many:
• In ability to cope with studies;
• Lack of interest in studies;
• Punishment in school;
• Work at home;
• Care of sibling;
• Shifting of residence/ demolition of slum, etc;
• Seasonal migration; and
• Frequent illness due to poor hygienic conditions in which they live;

One of the major reasons for the high drop out rates of children in the formal schools is their inability to cope with studies and so the easiest way of escaping the situation is to drop out. The challenge is to ensure retention of mainstreamed children in schools. It has been noticed that in most cases the non formal education programs help children to understand the basic literacy and get them interested in education but the efforts go waste when these children after getting mainstreamed are not able to cope with studies in the formal schools. It is therefore the utmost need that all these children should be enrolled in remediation classes. Also all the students who are weak in studies should be also enrolled in remediation classes. This serves many purposes, firstly, it helps to retain the interest of children in studies, secondly, it helps to ensure that children continue in the schools, it helps children to get adjusted in the formal school environment and most importantly remediation helps to bridge the gaps which arise when these children return back to schools after the seasonal migration.

But all the above efforts of preparing children for education will be incomplete if the parents are not roped into the program. And this can be made possible by regularly updating parents on the performance of their wards. The entire culture of education will percolate into this section of society only when parents can get assurance that their wards are performing.

It is with this background that the proposed project has been worked out. The proposed project would address the issue of access, mainstreaming and retention.

May 2018 Proposal 2018
Dec 2017 Site Visit December 2017
May 2016 Project Proposal 2016 2017
Mar 2016 Rohini Site Visit
Dec 2015 2016 Learning Center Proposal
Jul 2014 Budget 2014
Apr 2014 Minutes 2014
Apr 2014 Site Visit 2014
Feb 2013 Site Visit Report
Jan 2013 Meeting Minutes
Dec 2012 Budget For Learning Centres
Jun 2011 Budget for running two centres 2010 - 2011
Apr 2011 Minutes of Approval
Jan 2011 Site Visit Report
Apr 2010 progressReport April 2010
Jul 2009 Site Visit Report
Jun 2008 Revised Project Proposal
Nov 2007 Site Visit Report