Resources are the key requirements to kick off any intervention and it is very tough to mobilize resources for NGOs. Various social organisations feel the challenges of inappropriate resources for incorporating any social initiatives. In these situations, Organisations generally minimizes there social ambitions due to meagre resources.
This was also happening with us when we started thinking to work with deprived children. We had just one think and it was an idea to work for children. When we explore the fact it was found that in the nearby area of NGO, there is a huge population of rag pickers families, whose children are also involved in the rag picking. Children don’t even think to go to the school. Some of the families are economically weaker whose children are barely going in the government schools and some of them are going to the nearby private schools which are not up to the mark.
Introduction- Masti Ki pathshala
In the month of March 2012, we initiated the concept of “Masti ki Pathshala” for deprived children who are involved in rag picking and other domestic works. The objective behind this was to gather children from the nearby area so that they can spare their time to do fun and recreation in the evening time from 5 to 7:30 Pm. Another main objective of this activity is to convert children’s negative energies into positive by sensitize them for their goal by storytelling and other different tools.
Major Objectives
- To teach children with participatory and pedagogy approach.
- To convert their negative energies into positive through life skills.
- To teach about hygiene behaviours as they works in critical places.
- To develop children as a little volunteers
- To provide platform to the volunteers to serve their volunteer services
The Approach
AAs Team started to reach out the targeted families and interacted with their children. It was shocking for us to know that every second child is addicted with tobacco or any other substance. Some of the rag pickers were addicted of whitener (one of the major addiction in the rag picker children).
We started to register children and motivated them to come at our centre for recreation. Total 40 forty children have been registered. Now to mobilized volunteers, we started one campaign on face book named “Donate your skills”. The idea behind this campaign was to gather people of different skill set who wants to volunteer for one hour in a week for deprived children. It was a good platform for everyone who thinks to volunteer for a short period which will gives self satisfaction to work for a good cause.
Happily we got 60 volunteers in the period of one month. Now it was the time to organize these human resources so that utmost benefit to the children can be assured. AAs team discussed with the volunteers about the convenient time to take classes and made a weekly schedule containing name of volunteer, time and activity. The series of activities have been done which are mentioned as below.
Impact and future plans Children are aware with their basic rights and now they are planning to replicate their learning with other children living nearby them. The hygiene behaviour of children is also improving day by day.
It was the win win situation for the deprived children as well as the volunteers and for the organization too. The children got the variety of skills in one platform where they can learn daily new things with new people. On the other hand volunteers got self satisfaction to give something to society back. Most of volunteers share that they were thinking to be a volunteer but they could not found any place which match their expediency with organisational objectives. This Masti ki pathshala gave them a change to make positive change.