The Sahyog project budded as a voluntary initiative in Jari Mari, a sprawling slum in the suburb of Kurla in Mumbai, Maharashtra by a group of professionals in June 2000. It started an informal school for adolescent girls who had dropped out of middle and senior school in Sevak Nagar, Jari Mari. Sahyog began with a population of 20 girls and over the years has established its identity and become well known in the community. Today it works in two slum areas, Jari Mari (a large industrial slum of about 20,000 people) and Dindoshi (a resettlement colony of about 10,000 people), offering community members educational, health, and life skills education.
Currently, Asha for Educations supports the following activities
- Sahyog School Without Walls
This is the oldest program of Sahyog. Established in June 2000, this is a community-based school for out-of-school adolescent girls. It uses a learning-through-doing methodology, through which in addition to classroom teaching, we involve girls in community work, action research, mapping, etc. The primary aim of Sahyog’s school is to give these girls confidence in themselves and develop their capacity for critical thinking. Sahyog also offers the girls opportunity to link with the formal system at the 3rd, 5th, 8th and 10th std through the Open Schooling system. In 2004, the first batch of girls cleared the school leaving examinations (17 girls). Over the years, more than 300 girls have passed through Sahyog and each year, on average, enrolment doubles. Currently, its two branches have about 50 girls each.
- Sangharsh Special Education Program
Sangharsh is a community-based rehabilitation and training program that started in the Jari Mari slum areas of Mumbai. The program started in 2003 for poor families with children for special needs. It uses the abundant human resources that a slum can provide, but is low-cost and can be managed by local staff. Thus, with only two specialized teachers, the program is able to cater 25-30 children with different kinds of disability (currently predominantly students with mental retardation and hearing impairment). The local staff includes two assistants and five girls from the Sahyog girls’ school. Periodic trainings and assessment camps are organized to impart training to the local staff. Being located in the community, and through constant interaction with the families of the children, the program tries to develop awareness about their rights (their children’s and their own).
- Sahyog Ekta
Started in 2003, the Sahyog Ekta community based health program was set up as a small clinic in both school locations through which access to basic health services are provided (maternal health, immunization, T.B treatment, contraceptive services, advice and counseling) in collaboration with the municipal corporation. This clinic also functions as a free school health clinic for all students of Sahyog. The project also includes the development and implementation of Jhula, a life-skills curriculum for adolescent girls
Sahyog is engaged in a number of activities directed at improving the status of healthcare and education in the community. Without attempting to duplicate existing government and private efforts, the group aims to improve access to these services, by collaborating with existing organizations and increasing community awareness and mobilization. The money raised through WAH will go towards supporting the recurring costs of Sahyog’s activities mentioned above for the period 2005-2006.
