“Thebestway to predict thefuture is to create it.”AbrahamLincoln

Wings of Doon is an after school program that reinforces education. It raises the bar.

Presently, Aasraa, with the support of all friends and donors, has 1879 children across 14 after school support projects under Wings of Doon program for mainstreamed students in Dehradun.

Wings program aims to provide conceptual and curriculum support to children who live in slums where they have no desks to study at, no lamps to read under and no one to answer their questions when they don’t understand something. No child can study when he is sick or hungry. Nutrition and medical care are integral parts of the proposed program. We provide adequate nutrition ranging from a fruit, a glass of milk to hot meals. Our dedicated medical team ensures that all children in our programs are healthy and are given necessary healthcare support.

Eight out of the fourteen Wings projects run in government schools. In two government schools we run the program through a mutual agreement with the school management and other six schools comes under an MOU between Aasraa Trust and Department of Education – Uttarakhand to improve the quality of education and resources available in a select group of 6 Government schools in Dehradun, Uttarakhand. Program is called School Quality Enhancement Program (SQEP). The incredible potential of improving Government school’s infrastructure, training teachers to use updated teaching methodology, improving TLM and using Computer Aided learning to impact the learning levels of these underprivileged children is enormous.

The aim of this program is to show, using a sample selection of schools, how this intervention can seriously impact and improve the enrolment, attendance and learning level of children by providing additional resources including additional teachers and outreach staff, capacity building, Teaching and Learning Materials TLM), Computers & Computer Aided Learning (CAL).

Recently, an impact assessment format has also been designed and implemented to measure the difference between school class room learning and the Wings after school support programs. It measures both conceptual understanding and retention.

We see the positive impact every day as school results continue to improve and our children have started to excel at their studies.

Thank you for your incredible support which is helping our children  soar towards excellence.

There is only one thing that proves to be more expensive than education in life. The lack of it. – GB Santiago

At Aasraa, we firmly believe that providing children with access to quality education, supporting them in a holistic manner and working with their families and community, we can successfully influence the community outcomes. We are not just providing education, but ushering in a larger social change. Through your support, all children at Aasraa get a chance to achieve their full potential and transform the lives of not just themselves but their families and communities.

 Education is a secondary consideration in the lives of the street children and  residents of the  slum clusters we work with.  The struggle to earn a living takes precedence. Child labour is common as  children rag-pick, work in tea stalls, clean people’s homes. In most families, both parents work, so children are left to be supervised by the older girl children in the family. The level of alcoholism and abuse is high in these neighbourhoods. Life is hard and dreams are few. 

With your benevolent support, we now impact the lives of 3250 children who are educated, immunised, fed, mainstreamed to school, get remedial support and  we provide shelter for those who are homeless.

Aasraa aims to empower the most vulnerable children in Dehradun to help shape their lives and give them a meaningful existence. These children have always been treated like liabilities, we hope to help them become assets, for themselves and for the society. We bring them in, with the help of our Outreach team and help them achieve basic literacy through our Street Smart centers. With dedicated help from our teachers and relentless hard work from the children, we help them mainstream into regular schools.

Our children come from some of the most poverty ridden areas of the city which makes it hard for them to have an environment at home that is conducive to learning. They live in cramped quarters with no electricity or a desk. They lack adult guidance for academics, at home. All this essentially leads to poor understanding of concepts which take a toll on their performance in classrooms. That’s where Aasraa’s program Wings comes in. We give them teachers, proper nutrition, love and encouragement to learn to their heart’s content. With the right environment, a child can thrive and that’s what we aspire to provide these children with.

The most exciting among the recent developments at Aasraa is the triumvirate partnership between Aasraa Trust, The Education Alliance and the Government of Uttarakhand. This gives us the opportunity to convert these under-performing government schools in centers of quality education. This project, School Quality Enhancement Program(SQEP) has helped us enhance the quality of education for the students already enrolled in these schools, as well as the out of school children that Aasraa have mainstreamed to them. The six government schools that come under this particular project are all running our program Wings after the school hours. With over 700 students enrolled under the wings program in these schools, -- have been mainstreamed from Aasraa. We are brimming with pride for our students who are showing constant improvement every day.

Wings program is mandatory for all mainstreamed slum and street children to attend, so we at Aasraa can make sure that they don’t lose track of their progress with their curriculum. This block of time after school provides them with guidance and support for homework and conceptual understanding.

With the amalgamation of technology with traditional forms of learning, we aim to improve computer literacy. The children are eager to use android tablets and computers in our Computer Aided Learning(CAL) classes, that we have been able to provide them for the classes because of our generous donors.