Note From President Shernaz Vakil
LEAP OF FAITH WITH THE
VAIDU COMMUNITY
I am truly excited!
After months of delay and uncertainty we have finally zeroed in on our initiative of supporting the children of the Vaidu community. The programme CHALANG will finally become reality!
Yesterday, we had a very fruitful meeting with the Vipla foundation. Thanks, DGE Sandip Agarwalla, for introducing
them to us and for supporting us.
After a baseline study, it is quite clear that the children of this community need serious help. Rtn. Ptn. Ekta Shah and her family have been working with these children (through their family trust) and keeping them engaged with all the basic education they could give. Clearly, they needed more.
Finally, Vipla has made a very comprehensive proposal, starting with an initiative for parents of children 0-3 years in the form of workshops, creating a supportive home-learning environment and working to change attitudes in early childhood education. For the age group 3-6 years, we will start Balwadi centres at each location, running in two shifts. There will be continuous classroom observation and assessment for the children.
For primary grades, there will be remedial education, with diagnostic tests for children and regular mentoring.
Finally, the proposed intervention for adolescence will be in separate groups for girls and boys with weekly sessions on life skills, selfesteem, career awareness, spoken English etc. There will also be access to digital literacy. In other words, the children of this community will be supported from a very early stage right up to higher education, perhaps, even with scholarship support.
To kick this off, we are proposing a summer camp for two weeks in April, giving the community a glimpse of the exceptional intervention we propose over the next three years.
This is the transformation we are looking for!
A nomadic community lost and forgotten, will find a space for themselves, out of their alcoholic and tedious lives, into a hopeful and meaningful future.
— President Shernaz Vakil