Sambhali Trust Empowering Women and Girls in India

Sheerni Educational Project (Boarding Home)

The 22 girls are all improving at school and their latest tests were good, the majority nearly getting full marks, with Asu having problems in Maths and Rekha at reading, but the volunteers are spending 4 hours there daily are working to help them pick up. So in their half-year exams in December,they all had good results apart from Priya, Samta,Sangeeta and Santosh.

The girls were delighted to receive their own lap-top which was given to them by some guests visiting Sambhali’s projects. Now the volunteers are teaching them how to use the computer and programmes like „Word“ and „Paint“. They also gave several workshops including those about South America, Antartica and Europe; then concentrating on geography of Europe in particular and the different landscape and cultures. They have also done a fashion workshop – clothes, their fabrics, many cultures with different clothes, asking the girls to create their own fashion model and a handicraft workhop where the girls created bracelets from different colour threads.

Their height and weight measurements are regularly taken and they are all gaining weight eating the nutritious vegetarian meals they receive at the boarding home. There is a lot of construction work going on at the moment to create more space in the boarding home, so the girls have more areas to relax, study and play, which will be important as they grow older, as now the age range is 8-15 years old.

On Republic Day, January 26, the volunteers received an invitation to go to their school where there was a lot of singing and dancing performances lasting for 4 hours. Some girls had to go back to their village in January for 10 days to attend a marriage.

All girls are progressing in reading especially Hindi reading, only Neru has some problems but she is being given some extra tuition. Every day the volunteers read English books with some of them. We concentrate on girls who has deficits like Rekha.

Sheerni Self-Help Group Project

There are 10 self-help groups who meet every month to pay in their savings, and discuss the distribution of loans.

In August, 10,000 rupees was given to 2 women to purchase a little shop and to buy goats.

In September, more women were added to Group 7 and in Group 2, one women received 6000 rupees for material for her shop

In October 2 women from Group 1 paid their loan back, of 9000 rupees each. In Group 6 Sua Devi was given 10000 rupees to purchase a cow and now must pay back 1000 rupees per month. In Group 5 Sugna received 10000 rupees to start a small shop. Two other women also received loans of 10000 rupees to purchase a cow each.

In November, 3 women received loans of 9000, 14000 and 10000 rupees to start small shops and purchase 2 goats.

In December, there were a lot of loans, in total 19 women took out loans worth 181,000 rupees.

Sua Devi was presented with some money from a volunteer because she needed a medical operation and now we are glad to say that she is recovering happily.