Teaching and Day Care Program

Shrestha believes education is at the heart of improving the children’s prospects – not just for the children, but for their parents, too. We see it as equally important to engage with their parents and community leaders in the slum area to help them understand the value of education, as a way to help the whole family’s prospects in the long term. Through building relationships with the parents over the past few years, Shrestha has gained their trust and support, which is critical to ensuring that the children continue to attend school for as long as possible. The first Shrestha school was right in the heart of the slum, and we regularly invite parents to special events at our new schoolroom in a basement nearby.

At the Shrestha , we teach the children Hindi, English, maths and computing, in a friendly and supportive atmosphere, while also assisting in their moral development. We provide vocational training so that the children can learn a range of crafts, from jewellery making and art through to henna tattooing and tailoring clothes and bags. Our hope is that they’ll head into adulthood equipped with the skills and knowledge to start their own business or find a good job in a company and reach their full potential in society.

We also put a strong focus on fun and social skills at the Shrestha . We celebrate festivals and birthdays with the children, which gives them a lot of happiness, and each school day ends with a session of sports and games, to make sure they always leave with a smile.

The children living in the slum/streets face a number of problems, which are as follows:

• High cost of Private schooling.

• Lack of interest in parents about the education of their children.

• Lack of study space for the children.

• No opportunity for education, health and nutrition for street/orphan children.

Slum children are motivated to do small/odd jobs to help the family financially instead to going to school.

Objectives

• Establish a non formal education centre for providing quality education to the deprived and underprivileged children & address the nutritional & other health care needs through monthly health camps.

• To provide Remedial and Counseling support to school going children. This will be ensured through remedial counseling to the children and sensitization programme for parents as a follow up of activities.

• To provide Life Skill Education on weekly basis on issues like personality development, confidence building, behavior & etiquette, health & hygiene, reproductive health, values, good habits, & social concerns, & other related issues.

• To increase participation and awareness of local / community people, regarding issues related to rights of children.

• Organizing Community Level Awareness programs on Education, Health, & social issues.

• To increase enrollment & retention rates in the non formal education centers in the targeted slum.

• Mainstreaming children of the centers into formal schools after 1 year of intervention.