Asha for Education

1. Provide safety, health care, education, and nurturing to orphan girls, those who have lost contact with family and community, and have been declared abandoned by the government.
2. Provide same for orphaned handicapped children and work to reach their fullest potential in quality of life, communication, mobility, and literacy.
3. To intensively educate orphan girls so they can reach their fullest potential. For some this means higher education; others will require vocational training; girls will also be raised with household work so they can function well in their future families, and as mothers.
4. Identify ways to educate older girls who enter educational system far behind their age peers.
5. To give children who have had lives of violence a chance to be children and to feel nurtured.
6. To raise orphan children with disabilities as part of normal family life and to encourage the relationships and bonding between the regular girls and the ones with handicaps.

Shishur Sevay received its registration as a Society under the West Bengal Societies Act XXVI of 1961, on 14 June 2006. Shishur Sevay does not have FCRA, but has just been approved for 80G tax exemption. The children arrived in February 2007 by order of the Child Welfare Committee.

Shishur Sevay represents a long term dream of Dr. Michelle Harrison who has been sponsoring children in West Bengal schools over the last seven years, and has also been an Asha volunteer with Asha CNJ and Kolkata. As she is a foreigner, she cannot have a governance role in the Society, but she has brought together a group of committed and dedicated Indians (including her Indian born daughter) to serve the children through their leadership and governance. Dr. Harrison stays at Shishur Sevay, sharing the floor mats with the children at night.