Sunday, June 29, 2008
Contact us
If you would like to know more details and / or would like to contribute in any way you like, you can contact us through this blog. Please leave a comment for any post with your email id and the issue you want to discuss and we would get in touch with you.
How can you contribute?
There are various ways in which you can contribute. Apart from the funds, if you have time and want to volunteer for some activity, we are than happy to work with you.
1) Sponsor a child: Under this scheme you (as individual or as a group) can sponsor a child for a year. The annual expenses of a child is Rs 12000. This amount can be paid in one or more installments as per your comfort. These payments can be done to any of the prayaas team members by cheque or cash. You can also transfer the money directly to the Prayaas bank account. You can get in touch with us and we can discuss more details about the particular child you would like to sponsor etc. Last academic year, we had 4 children who were sponsored under this scheme.
2) Other donation: You can donate any amount you want. Again you can pay by cheque, cash or direct bank transfer.
3) Volunteering for Prayaas: At Prayaas we do not have any hierarchical setup and we do not have any head or secretary or anything else of that sort. We all work as a team. Anybody can join in and contribute as much as he or she wants and can. The main task we have is to monitor the progress of kids. The prayaas school runs from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM , Mon-Sat. One of us goes there everyday to ensure that the school runs smoothly. We also need to be in constant touch with the private school authorities to monitor the progress of kids studying there. We also organize dance, music and drawing workshops for kids on weekends. You can choose to participate in any of these activities. In case you have any other ideas, we would love to work with you on them.
1) Sponsor a child: Under this scheme you (as individual or as a group) can sponsor a child for a year. The annual expenses of a child is Rs 12000. This amount can be paid in one or more installments as per your comfort. These payments can be done to any of the prayaas team members by cheque or cash. You can also transfer the money directly to the Prayaas bank account. You can get in touch with us and we can discuss more details about the particular child you would like to sponsor etc. Last academic year, we had 4 children who were sponsored under this scheme.
2) Other donation: You can donate any amount you want. Again you can pay by cheque, cash or direct bank transfer.
3) Volunteering for Prayaas: At Prayaas we do not have any hierarchical setup and we do not have any head or secretary or anything else of that sort. We all work as a team. Anybody can join in and contribute as much as he or she wants and can. The main task we have is to monitor the progress of kids. The prayaas school runs from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM , Mon-Sat. One of us goes there everyday to ensure that the school runs smoothly. We also need to be in constant touch with the private school authorities to monitor the progress of kids studying there. We also organize dance, music and drawing workshops for kids on weekends. You can choose to participate in any of these activities. In case you have any other ideas, we would love to work with you on them.
What do we do?
Part of the things we do have already been mentioned in the last post. This is a more comprehensive post with the events and activities we and our students undertake. There are also details about the current status of the initiative.
As already mentioned, we are proud to announce that 14 more students have started going to Sahjanand school which is a main-stream private school not very far from the campus. This is in continuation of our efforts to bring the street children into the formal education system. I would like to remind that last year, 17 students joined the Sahjanand school and they have done well in studies. The school authorities are glad that the experiment is working and so have extended the support further by incorporating more students.
The new students have started going to school and all arrangements have been made. These include school fees, transportation to and fro from the school, school uniform, textbooks, notebooks and stationary, etc.
The admission of students into mainstream school which started last year, has also helped in containing the dropout rates. Over the last couple of months, we have realized that we might be running close to full capacity, given the current infrastructure, in terms of children we can help in an effective manner. So, for the time being, we have stopped adding any more students to the initiative and have freezed the number at 55 (including those which are already going to Sahjanand). We have come to the conclusion that it would be better to keep the efforts small and sustainable, rather than becoming too big and facing the risk of shutdown and thereby affecting the lives of all the children.
Other events
Prayaas aims at all round development of students. So while we stress on attendance at the school, we break the monotony through activities:
Prayaas organized a blood and a general health check up camp in association with the Rotary Club of Ahmedabad. The medicines prescribed to the children in these camps were sponsored by Prayaas. The volunteers also ensured that children have their medicines regularly and in future prevent the nutritional deficiency. A second health workshop was organized with help from the Armed Forces Batch of 2008.
There were regular features like drama, card making and art workshops. A professional drama workshop for the children was also organized by the Eklavya School especially for Prayaas kids.
The kids also enjoyed "Jajantaram Mamantaram" and "Om Shanti Om" specially screened for them at IIM.
Prayaas volunteers celebrated Holi, Dushahra, Deepawali and Christmas with the kids. The kids contributed to the festivities by unleashing their creativity for the preparation and decoration.
The annual sports day at IIM was an instant hit with the kids. They had races, football match, kabaddi and lots more.
Prayaas students put up a brilliant dance show at IIMA's annual cultural festival - Chaos. This show was in collaboration with an NGO - Arzoo. The cards made by the kids were also put up for sale in this event and were widely appreciated.
Apart from these we try to take the children to specific field trips as and when possible and if we get an appropriate opportunity.
As already mentioned, we are proud to announce that 14 more students have started going to Sahjanand school which is a main-stream private school not very far from the campus. This is in continuation of our efforts to bring the street children into the formal education system. I would like to remind that last year, 17 students joined the Sahjanand school and they have done well in studies. The school authorities are glad that the experiment is working and so have extended the support further by incorporating more students.
The new students have started going to school and all arrangements have been made. These include school fees, transportation to and fro from the school, school uniform, textbooks, notebooks and stationary, etc.
The admission of students into mainstream school which started last year, has also helped in containing the dropout rates. Over the last couple of months, we have realized that we might be running close to full capacity, given the current infrastructure, in terms of children we can help in an effective manner. So, for the time being, we have stopped adding any more students to the initiative and have freezed the number at 55 (including those which are already going to Sahjanand). We have come to the conclusion that it would be better to keep the efforts small and sustainable, rather than becoming too big and facing the risk of shutdown and thereby affecting the lives of all the children.
Other events
Prayaas aims at all round development of students. So while we stress on attendance at the school, we break the monotony through activities:
Prayaas organized a blood and a general health check up camp in association with the Rotary Club of Ahmedabad. The medicines prescribed to the children in these camps were sponsored by Prayaas. The volunteers also ensured that children have their medicines regularly and in future prevent the nutritional deficiency. A second health workshop was organized with help from the Armed Forces Batch of 2008.
There were regular features like drama, card making and art workshops. A professional drama workshop for the children was also organized by the Eklavya School especially for Prayaas kids.
The kids also enjoyed "Jajantaram Mamantaram" and "Om Shanti Om" specially screened for them at IIM.
Prayaas volunteers celebrated Holi, Dushahra, Deepawali and Christmas with the kids. The kids contributed to the festivities by unleashing their creativity for the preparation and decoration.
The annual sports day at IIM was an instant hit with the kids. They had races, football match, kabaddi and lots more.
Prayaas students put up a brilliant dance show at IIMA's annual cultural festival - Chaos. This show was in collaboration with an NGO - Arzoo. The cards made by the kids were also put up for sale in this event and were widely appreciated.
Apart from these we try to take the children to specific field trips as and when possible and if we get an appropriate opportunity.
About us
Prayaas is Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) students' initiative to provide education to children living in slums around IIMA and enable them to merge in the social mainstream.It was started in 2004 as part of a student project in a course and have been carried forward from there by the following batches. The new campus was being built around this time in the institute and some students wanted to make a difference to the lives of the children of the workers involved in all the construction activity. They started with small steps which over a period of time formulated into the desire to make a permanent impact in the lives of such children through the medium of education.
They gathered these children as well others from the slums near the campus and helped in their education as much as possible. It was felt that the continuity would be maintained if the succeeding batches are involved who would take the initiative forward. It is hard to imagine that you would not find at least some students in a reputed B-school (or for that matter in any premier institution) who are willing to give back to society in some way or the other. So, the wheel started rolling and the legacy continues.
Each batch took it a step further and the scope grew gradually. Currently, the vision is to get these children into mainstream schools and let education blossom their lives. In the academic year 2007-08, 17 students were admitted to a private main-stream school called Sahajanand school. Seeing the good performance of these students, the school authorities kindly agreed to incorporate another 14 students in 2008-09. The students study in the 1st to 5th standards as of now.
Through this forum, we want to provide an update on what all the team has been doing and how has been the progress of the initiative. The blog is aimed to act as a source of information for everyone interested so that they can get to know what is happening with respect to the initiative. Also, it would allow flow of suggestions / recommendations in an easier fashion and would enable people to get in touch to contribute / volunteer.
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