Asha for Education

Our vision is for all children to have a nurturing and happy childhood. Our mission is to promote ‘child-friendly sites’; where every child living on a construction site is safe, healthy and educated, and able to enjoy their childhood.

MMC provides care for various age groups in their 28 centers across Mumbai. Their crèches for those under 3 years old, balwadi, or preschool, for those between 3-5 years old, and primary programs for those between 6-14 years old take place on construction sites in finished or unoccupied rooms that the builder assigns them. The staff assigned to these centers are specially trained by MMC or other training programs. With 40% of their teachers coming from construction sites themselves, MMC hopes to train more women in the communities and create self-sustaining centers. These teachers are responsible for educating and providing care for the children, communicating with the parents and essentially running the centers on a daily basis.
The mission of MMC comprises two important aspects of a child’s growth: education and health. The crèches aim to develop essential skills such as physical dexterity and active engagement through independent and guided creative play, social interaction, and physical games. The children in balwadi learn imaginative thinking and problem solving through song, dance, and other artistic expression such as plays. They also develop pre-reading, pre-writing and pre-math skills. The primary program of MMC acts as additional help for those children who are enrolled in school. It encourages children to enroll and stay in government schools, and it also offers extra help on their homework. In this half day program, children also have time to draw, paint, act, play and go on educational field trips around Mumbai. In addition, they are engaged in preparatory learning of the English language and computers.
MMC also addresses the lack of necessary nutrition in these children’s lives by providing them with healthy meals and advice on nutrition to their families. They offer breakfast in the form of porridge made with various grains, a mid-morning snack consisting of fresh fruits and eggs a couple times a week, rive and lentils with vegetables for lunch, and afternoon snacks of peanuts and jiggery or sprouts. They disseminate information to the children’s parents on healthy eating, and they have doctors who make weekly rounds to check on the children’s growth and health.