Donate one rupee each day
Donate one rupee each day
A guest post by Aseem Rambani
With daily media reports on Indian economy leaping with a net growth of 8% GDP every year, one is bound to feel good that our country is on the path to peace, harmony and progress. So many graduates are moving to big cities to find lucrative jobs in ever-expanding Indian market. Big international companies are setting their plant on Indian land bringing money and employment both in India.
Despite all these reports, we often ignore the plight of poor which still constitutes a major chunk of our population. With increased consumption of resources and sky-rocketing prices of basic amenities, more than quarter population finds it hard to feed their children three meals a day. While we are enjoying sumptuous meals at expensive eating joints, some unfortunate ones have to sleep with a hungry stomach. We spend hundreds to give tips to waiters, but always hesitate to donate ten rupees to a needy person. Buying expensive clothes in every season, we often forget to give a thought to those children who wear the same uniform every day.
How many times do we really know the count of coins in our wallet or purse? Probably never, then why are we so reluctant to spare a single rupee coin for those who really need it. We never regret if we lose a ten rupee note, but then why do we feel so bad if a hungry child asks us to feed him/her outside an eating joint. We need to change our mindset and be considerate toward others. If you really want to know the value of a single rupee, ask those which live on the edge every single day. Many children in our country sleep without dinner every night, while others (who are made by same God as us) are never sure will they get any food in whole day or not. Is this the India, we all want it to be?
Besides the issue of malnutrition among children, we are unaware of major issues like illiteracy and intellectual development of them. Despite so many government and voluntary measures, these problems are eating our country at Grass-root level. If not much, we still can play a very pivotal role in shaping the future of these children, which in turn will shape the future of our country. Many NGO’s run on voluntary donations ranging from single to thousands of rupees. A little charity may not affect your pocket, but can bring positive changes in lives of so many. Donating a very small amount may not be much for you, but it could be a reason to smile for many.
Sparing a single rupee from our expenses every day can help to shape the future of a child. We are born in families where our parents take care of all our expenses, what about those who don’t have parents or whose parents don’t earn much to feed them. If we are given this opportunity to lend a helping hand to our younger brothers and sisters, we should take the initiative. Try donating a rupee from your daily expenses. A little help from your side can improve the lives of many.
Famous writer Thomas Fuller once said, “Charity begins at home, but it should not end there”. Let’s spread this message in every corner of our community. Let’s save a rupee every day and play a small role for a bright future of these young children.
The above photograph is of Vinita,age 13, a girl child our literacy centre located in a village Mahabadia, distt.Bhopal.Vinita is a regular student of our literacy centre and is a fast learner.She earns Rs.400=00 per month by throwing cow dung of aldnlord of the village.Ahambhumika is making best possible efforts to provide at least basic edcuation to the underpriviledged girl childrn like Vinita.
This is Jyoti,age 5 years.She lost her father when she was in the womb of her mother.After few months of her birth her mother went to live with some one else leaving behind Joyoti on the mercy of her grand mother . Now Jyoti lives with her grand mother.Her grand mother is aged enough and can not take proper care of Jyoti.Jyoti attends our literacy classes regularly. We are looking for the best possible options for the girls like Jyoti so that they could be cared properly.
Aseem Rambani the author of this guest post is MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Maine, US. He belongs from Village Chabba, Distt Amritsar, Punjab.
An effort to spread the Fragrance of Education through Mahak
An effort to spread the Fragrance of Education through Mahak
- Guest Post By Niharika Mishra
Jawaharlal Nehru had once said-"Educate a man and you educate one person. Educate a woman and you educate the whole family."
Female Education in India is not a gift of modern civilization. In olden days women excelled in the sphere of education and hence the goddess of learning was conceived of as a female who was popularly known as “Saraswati”, which is followed even today. However in earlier days, the traditional value of girl education in India was to enable her to be more competent in running the household, especially motherhood and to be able to give children a better upbringing. Nowadays when it is becoming more and more vital for women to be at par with men, education of women makes available to the country a wealth of capacity that is now largely wasted through lack of opportunity. This will result in fuller and effective utilization of human resources and raising the standard of living.
But inspite of such progressive approaches, there are many reasons female education never gets the importance it deserves like, Gender based Inequality, Occupation of Girls as cheap Domestic Help, parents' fear of physical Exploitation or abuse at schools.
Hence some extra effort is needed to encourage girls to get educated, especially from the poorer section of the society. Mahak is one such initiative by Ahambhumika.
Mahak is the name of a voluntary non-profit education institute set-up by Ahambhumika to facilitate education the daughters of labourers of the village of Mahabadia, Bhopal. Many may raise a question that why such a favor is just being done to the girls. The answer is that Mahak is an extra effort meant to assist educating girls in the rural areas where their education usual takes a backseat for more reasons than one.
At Mahak we are making basic efforts to spread literacy among the daughters of the labourers of Mahabadia, who otherwise would've never been able to go to school. Usually such girls are supposed to take care of the house when their parents are off to work at younger age and join their parents in their labour to earn an extra penny when they get older.
We began by trying to convince the parents about the benefits of educating their daughter and how it would help them in housework as well as their labour in future. We explained how they'll be able to demand a better pay for their labour if they are educated enough. After much persuasion most of them agreed to send their daughters to our school for a short period of two hours everyday from 3:00 pm to 5:00pm.
With an initial start-off of 22 girls from the age group of 5 to 12, Mahak has been a decent success till now. We have started with teaching them reading and writing Hindi and basic Arithmetic and hope to progress in this as well. Shortly we will also start drawing and painting activity to make these imitative child friendly.
The initiative is run all by us without any major sponsorship. Hence any help assisting us in enhancing the amount of education we are providing right now to the girls will be really helpful. Currently our basic requirements comprise of dresses, stationery and drawing materials like notebooks, pencils, wax colours, drawing books, drawing copies for writing and drawing.
Any little help from you will help us give the girls a better future with the help of education.
You can send your donations to
Subrat Goswami
Ahambhumika
C/o Archaeological Survey, G.T.B. Complex- Block,4th Floor,
T.T .Nagar, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh,
Pin-462003
E-Mail: ahambhumika@yahoo.co.in
ahambhumika@gmail.com
Website: www.ahambhumika.org
The details of our banking profile are as follows:
Bank Name: CANARA BANK,
Branch - MAHARANA PRATAP NAGAR, BHOPAL
Account No.: 2073101015874
IFSC Code: CNRB0002073
Please draw your Cheques/Demand Drafts in favour of
AHAM BHUMIKA SWAYAM SEVI SANSTHA payable at BHOPAL
and send them to us by post on the above mentioned address.
Important: If you're doing a online transfer to our account, please send us an email on ahambhumika@yahoo.co.in with your address and donation amount, so that we can send you the receipt.
The photographs of MAHAK are posted above.
Mahak- an education centre for girl child of stone crushers in a village near Bhopal
These are the photographs of “Mahak” ( Flavour).An education centre started by us for the girl child of stone crushers of a villagenamely Mahabadia near Bhopal. These girl child have never been to school and they look after the household work after their parents are off to the field. We are providing them initially basic education of reading and writing Hindi and Artihmetic.These education centre started functioning from 11.12.2011.We also intend to add some interesting activities like doll making,art and craft etc.shortly. The main thought behind these initiative to make these girl child literate. I am not a writer at all but I can not restrain myself from expressing my happiness after starting this intitaive.We had a lot of discussion with the parents of these girl child to send them to this education centre for a period of 2 hours from 3.00 to 5.00 PM every day .The age group of these girl child is 5 to 12 years and at present 22 girl child have joined.Ahambhumika will provide them stationery materials, bags ,books and footwear’s. Shortly we will also provide them sweaters and dresses, skipping ropes and , few other games . And these whole initiative is not at all funded by any Corporate or government. This is all due to support of you people. You may further support us by spreading words. Mail us at ahambhumika@gmail.com if you have any query or you wish to support our this small initiative.
Subrat Goswami
Founder & Volunteer
Ahambhumika
Volunteer us from home
Volunteer us from home
What can you do?
1. If you are a blogger you may help us by writing blogpost on our activity.
2. You may prepare tweets for our various campaigns with catchy slogans .
3. You may Retweet our tweets.
4. If you are a designer, you may design poster for us.
5. You may connect us to the generous people via mail to seek further support.
6. If you know any Corporate you may connect us with him via mail.
7. If you are a fund raiser, you may guide us on this.
8.If you are a writer you may write content on various topics for us.
9.If you are an editor may edit our posts/content.
10.. If you are an Artist, you may donate / auction your painting to raise fund for Aham Bhumika.
If you wish to volunteer please mail us at :- ahambhumika@gmail.com
There are many pre-conceived notions related to volunteering and social networking among us. We think that volunteering can be only done by going to the NGO. But volunteering goes beyond our physical presence. Commitment has no boundaries.
We think that Social networking is just for sharing photos that we took from our recent Goa trip. But a person named Shawn Ahmed (he goes by the handle @uncultured on twitter) creates awareness and funds through social media and recently, due to his efforts he was invited to Davos. Social media is no longer a platform for frustrated arm-chair activists. A single retweet or a single share on facebook can connect a donor to the NGO.
Aham Bhumika is a Bhopal based registered NGO started by few like -minded people .We need volunteers to spread a word about various charitable activities and campaigns of Aham Bhumika.
If you spend some time on social networking sites like twitter and facebook you can volunteer for us from home.
1. If you are a blogger you may help us by writing blogpost on our activity.
2. You may prepare tweets for our various campaigns with catchy slogans .
3. You may Retweet our tweets.
4. If you are a designer, you may design poster for us.
5. You may connect us to the generous people via mail to seek further support.
6. If you know any Corporate you may connect us with him via mail.
7. If you are a fund raiser, you may guide us on this.
8.If you are a writer you may write content on various topics for us.
9.If you are an editor may edit our posts/content.
10.. If you are an Artist, you may donate / auction your painting to raise fund for Aham Bhumika.
If you wish to volunteer please mail us at :- ahambhumika@gmail.com
A visit to Grain School
A Visit to Grain School -Guest post by Rahul Nayak
Almost a year back, I accidentally came in contact with Subrat Goswami. We had a small meeting few days after Diwali and Subrat in his modest style explained about his efforts to form a small group of motivated people who work in suburban villages of Bhopal for betterment of women and children. So I got introduced to Ahambhumika, which Subrat hates to call NGO (he prefers calling it a group of motivated people instead). I guess that was the reason I was able to bypass my immense reluctance towards NGOs and meet Subrat with an open mind.
In the meeting which lasted just a little over half an hour, Subrat proposed to host a photo exhibition, with the aim of gathering public support for Ahambhumika. This eventually kept our extra official hours busy for almost next 6 months. We finally hosted the exhibition in May (2011). Along with many dignitaries who attended the exhibition, I met students of grain school, the women of a small village called Mahabadi in the rural suburbs of Bhopal.
Over the past one year, Subrat and I kept on exchanging our thoughts regularly. Although being in Bangalore I tried to be a part of Ahambhumika as much I can but it was only during my visit to Bhopal this Diwali I got the chance to visit the Grain School.
The School is set up in the village of Mahabadia at local Anganwadi. Ride to village is not a very smooth one as the approach road is quite rough. In the evening when there are no Anganwadi activities, the grain school classes are held from 7 to 8 PM on weekends. Subrat and his sister Kavita are the permanent teachers and occasionally some volunteers visit to take special classes.
We were there well before 6.30 PM and even though the class was supposed to start at 7 PM the attendance was very good soon after we arrived. I saw many familiar faces; I had met these women in the photo exhibition.
Their humble hospitality was the first thing that I noticed. I was greeted by everyone. They all came very well dressed and well prepared for the class. I guess over the past one year, it has become their daily socializing activity and I could see that they cherish it.
It has been a year since the current batch (the first batch) of the school started. The concept was simple, educate women of the village in some basic literacy and provide them with grains as incentive to attend the classes, so they don’t drop out of school in their struggle for basic necessities. Initially the 1st standard CBSE curriculum was adopted. Some books donated by Parham (http://www.pratham.org/) were also added later. Towards the end of it (as I write this) some vocational training was also included in the curriculum. The class which I visited was a knitting class where Kavita Ji was teaching the women how to knit Sweaters and mufflers.
The grains school has a pretty good attendance record. 30kg of grains (wheat and rice) per month is given to every woman attending the school regularly. The grain stock is accumulated entirely by the collection campaigns at the schools of Bhopal and generous donations from Ahambhumika well wishers and supporters. There has been no funding involved in the entire activity.
These women or Mahabadia, are now able to read news paper in Hindi, they read children story books and enjoy them, they can write (and not just their names but much more), they can even do basic arithmetic enough to multiply, add and subtract and understand their applications in real life scenario like basic household accounting. They can also knit sweaters and woolen wears for their dear ones. While I was there, one of the students, Santo, proudly exhibited a woolen cap she just completed in the class. It was no less than a novel invention for her. I also got to look at her notebook. Considering the fact that just a year ago, she was completely illiterate; anybody will be surprised to see her writing.
This batch of grain school is completing its tenure now. A year back, when Ahambhumika started the school, these women were completely illiterate. However their will to learn was strong back then and now even more so. Subrat told me that he was even threatened by a village man against teaching his wife. It was only because of the support of these women, especially Kamala Ji (in whose home the Anganwadi and the grain school is hosted), Ahambhumika was able to continue the school. Over the year, the effort has gathered tremendous respect amongst villagers. The effort has been supported by the Gram Sarpanch as well.
As we were about to leave, Kamala ji insisted that we must have some tea. Before we could say no, it was already served. Generally tea is served with extra sugar near around here but I guess she knew that the city people do not like too much sugar so it was served with exactly the amount of sugar I like. I could not help writing these last few lines. The hospitality of these women of Mahabadia is as warm as their curiosity to learn. I hope the next time I visit Bhopal I will have a chance to learn from them a little bit .
Below are some the photographs taken by me of Grain School.
Rahul Nayak
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