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History:

Asha’s involvement with Aralu started with a site visit to Karnataka in Sept, 2000. Volunteers from Asha Chitradurga traveled to the Bidar district to visit the 2 Pre-primary care centers at Kamthana and Yedlapur. They met with the founder of Aralu (Mr. Meril, who started Aralu in 1993 and had a background almost identical to the orphans his organization cares after) who gave them an overview of the organization and its centers. Asha liked the model Aralu was working on, which aims to go towards self sustainability (through dairy farming and running a plantation) and empowering the underprivileged children and community with education. The organization runs 2 Pre-primary care centers where children live and are educated. Eventually, the Pre-primary care centers hope to transition these kids into the government run primary schools. The current transfer rate is ~60%.

Asha committed to Aralu and in 2001 started sponsoring an orphanage project (Belaku) for 20 children. This included funding for the building structure, salaries of the staff, clothing/food/essentials for the kids, and the plantation on the land to help support the self sustainability initiative. Over the years, Asha has continued its commitment and sponsorship of this project and helped the Belaku orphanage thrive and care for the orphan children. Asha has conducted several site visits, reviewed and approved various budgets according to the needs of the children and the orphanage, and provided computers and scanners for their education and use. Furthermore, the funds have supported efforts to empower women in the community, and helped protect children against trafficking.

Mission:

The program will help the children develop as independent self confident individuals with guidance given for capacity building, child rights and education.

The Belaku home is an initiative to provide clean living conditions for underprivileged children in Bidar district of Karnataka. The majority of population in this area comprises of poverty-stricken dalits, who leave their families in search of greener pastures in the big towns and cities nearby. The children living in the Belaku residential home are selected by Aralu ().The focus is on kids who end up on the street or become child labourers under varied circumstances such as.
• Due to the death of their parents and lack of a good caring guardian
• One or more parents have abandoned them to seek work elsewhere

There are some challenges faced by Aralu with this project.
• Controlling student drop-out rate: One of the biggest challenges is to promote the advantages of education in this area, so that the student drop--out rate in the home and school can be reduced. Some students don’t understand the significance of education in improving their lives and drop-out and eventually get dragged into the fold of child labour.
• Transportation facilities and improved infrastructure for children: The children residing in the Belaku home walk a few kilometers from home to school and back. A lot of times, this distance is impossible to be covered due to rains. Also, it is not very safe since there aren’t any lights and it seems there are snakes etc. during the rainy season. A need for transportation and better roads is imperative because as of now, it hinders the Belaku children from being present in the school.
• More support/co-ordination from local government authorities: The Belaku home has no government support at the moment. The students would benefit from support from the local government authorities in terms of funding or subsidies to help them with their sustainability.

Computer center:

Keeping in mind the significance of technology education, Asha Chicago started a computer center in the residential home to expose and educate the children residing there to PCs. This is an important step in giving the children access to the necessary skills required in the modern work-place.

Building renovation:

The kitchen in the Belaku home had a thatched roof and was crumbling with the rains. There was a dire need of a permanent and reliable structure to facilitate a sanitary and safe environment. Therefore, the renovation of the kitchen was done. Also, the toilets and the plumbing was fixed.

Improved support staff:

The support staff at the Belaku home is very efficient in managing the children and their needs. The cooks prepare clean and healthy meals, and since most of the children are first generation learners and come to the residential home at a very young age, a tuition teacher comes every evening for a few hours to help the children with their studies.

Rural Science community center initiated:

In 2008-09 to create opportunity to children to have a basic science facility that the children from the community can make use of. To provide opportunity to have library facility, create community awareness and discussion on issues related to health, education, agriculture, child rights, employment, Right to Information act, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, etc. Also, creating a platform for community to discuss and take action against social problems and evils such as child marriage, child labor, etc. To create community interest, in importance of the center and to generate community ownership of the center in long term.To serve as models for future potential development of government-run centers. Creating a base to introduce new ideas in education and teaching through partnerships with the government school.

Basic needs met more effectively:

Basic needs like rain coats are provided to help them go to school in the monsoons and medical facilities are provided to the children more effectively.

Teacher training program:

Rebecca (from Prashanti Kutir; Belaku Project; she stays in the Belaku orphanage, helps with the children’s studies and also takes care of the bridge school ) along with teachers from the pre primary centers went to the Learning Network's Math workshop held at Hyderabad. Anita who organized the workshop too mentioned that they were very happy and receptive with the workshop contents. They enjoyed the experience immensely. The training imparted to them helped them work effectively at the Belaku and Pre-primary care centers.

Plantation:

The center started a plantation and dairy farm that is being nurtured by the children and staff and serves as a long term sustained support for them.

Computer center:

The computer center started by Asha Chicago has helped the children learn the significance of technology education. Asha Chicago started a computer center in the residential home to expose and educate the children residing there to PCs. This is an important step in giving the children access to the necessary skills required in the modern work-place.
• The children residing in the Belaku home are more aware for cleaner living conditions. They are more aware of the importance of sanitation.

Children and their Education:

• Adding more children to the home
• Create opportunities for children that encourage them to be curious and learn by doing and playing.
• Improve children’s ability to understand content after reading and listening.
• Improve verbal and writing skills so that children can express their opinions clearly, accurately and with confidence.
• Make language learning an enjoyable process
• Setup progress card: The work in this regard has been started in the form of semiannual and yearly progress cards. But we need to create monthly progress cards evaluating incremental changes.
• Create a monthly lesson plan that defines the learning goals for a set of similar ability students.
• Conduct periodic verbal and written assessments in addition to the progress card
• Evaluate the monthly progress in terms of conceptual understanding.

Teachers:

Teacher training would help them analyze alternative teaching methods.
Teaching with the help of readily available aids in the surrounding would help the teachers in teaching the kids better and kids will be able to learn better. Presence of trained teachers will make the school environment more conducive for teaching and learning.

Community:

Educated children who have strong confidence in themselves would help in the creation of a stronger community which is more aware of its rights and knows how to get them from the govt.