Preventing school dropout of 300 children in India

Name of Project: Preventing school dropout of 400 children in India

Project Period: Ongoing

Specific Objectives of the Project:

• The children in Government Homes and red-light areas gain academic, vocational and life skill education.

Achievements of the Project:

• Teachers for Grade 7th & 8^th in Government homes have joined and their classes are going well, Level 4 has thus started from October to December Quarter.
• 75 girls in Bal Kalyan Nagari were provided with track pants and t-shirts.
• Vacation Camp & Children’s Day celebration was successfully conducted at Chembur Children’s Home and our Education centres.
• Classes have begun in Bhiwandi red light area and the children are responding well.
• Sports Day & Carol Singing competition were conducted for the youth in Turbhe & Ghatkopar red light areas. Youth enjoyed both the events very much.
• Peer learning was started by the youth to tutor our younger children. Children were mapped to the youth as per subjects and levels. This eco-system is in trial format to strengthen our youth to become community builders in the field of education.

Number of beneficiaries: 461

Key Activities:

• Early childhood Education
• Remedial Education
• Youth sessions
• Awareness and Counselling to prevent school dropout
• Awareness sessions and counseling about hygiene and WASH behaviors
• Life skills training and access to vocational training courses
• Raising community educators and volunteers through parent & youth training

Challenges:

• Some children are into addictions and there is bad peer influence. We look forward to address this through professional help.
• School workload is also sometimes given to the teachers in Government homes and hence our extra classes get affected.
• Quarterly testing of kids who haven’t achieved objectives, is challenging because of time crunch.
• It is challenging to accommodate all children as schools are operating both online and offline.
• Some children have not consistently performed given slow learning and hence keeping them in a regular remedial level is not serving the purpose.
• There are frequent electricity outages in Turbhe and hence it becomes very difficult for the teachers/youth mentors to conduct sessions.

A little boy’s dream

Tanish* is an 8 years old child. He came into Chembur Children’s Home in 2016. When he was very young, he lost his family members at Dadar station. A police officer found him and helped him to find his parents after putting him in remand home. However, they were unable to trace his parents. So he continued to stay in the children’s home.

Tanish was slow in his studies but owing to age appropriation he was put in the 5th grade at the school. He was never interested in studies and never attended class willfully. During one of the celebrations done by Sahaara, a dance event was going on. Tanish showed keen interest and the teachers discovered that he is a very talented dancer. The teachers had viewed him with just the academic lens and hence were focused on his progress in studies only. When they saw Tanish perform and exhibit his talent, all the teachers appreciated him. He expressed his dream to become a performer if he is not able to become a military officer. The encouragement and appreciation from teachers enabled him to come regularly to class and actively participate.

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