Asha Bhavan Centre

In order to provide a safe and caring place for girls in need of care and protection, Asha Bhavan Centre has set up a Children's Home, in Howrah district, and another one in South 24 Parganas district, under the Juvenile Justice (care & protection) Act 2015. It can accommodate 300 girls with disabilities until they turn 18.
Most of these children are either orphans or girls who have been trafficked or abused and whose family situation is unstable. They are referred to the children's home by decision of the Child Welfare Committee and receive rehabilitation services.

Asha Bhavan Centre believes in the rights of people with disabilities to get access to proper rehabilitation services and support. ABC has therefore implemented a program of nine Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) centres for children with disabilities in the remote districts of West Bengal, India. This program promotes special therapeutic and educational intervention for children with disabilities from 0 to 16 years in the rural community and involves the parents as equal partners in the rehabilitation process from start to finish.
The social workers conduct outreach meetings to find the target beneficiaries in the community and visit the individual beneficiaries' homes to monitor the home management program. The visit is also monitored by the therapist and special educator if necessary.
Meeting with rural communities (about 30 villages around the rehabilitation centres) is also an important part of the CBR programme.

To promote the rural education, Asha Bhavan Centre took initiatives and established a program of 10 government pre-primary and primary schools "Bodhoday Vidya Mandir" (BVM), Enlightenment of Knowledge and an English school St Teresa, in remote rural villages, in different districts of West Bengal. The BVM schools provides inclusive education with social, moral and spiritual values amongst the rural students, and empowers them for mainstreaming. These schools have very good reputation in their area and the children are doing very well once they join Government schools for higher studies.

Asha Bhavan Centre decided to open a new programme called “The Bridge” which aims to reduce the gap between marginalized communities from West Bengal and education. A bridge school is designed to provide education to children who have missed out on their primary education or have dropped out of school for various reasons. The primary goal of a bridge school is to provide these children with the skills and knowledge they need to transition successfully into mainstream schooling. Four bridge centres have been created during the year 2022-2023, and the project is running successfully.

Since the establishment of Asha Bhavan Centre in 1999, the organisation has been providing tutoring courses to marginalized children in rural areas of West Bengal. 20 centres are running, 5 of which are held in Asha Bhavan Centre buildings and 15 of which are accessible free of charge by the community.
Due to poverty, many people in villages are not able to send their children to private schools and hence depend upon government schools for education. And, in rural areas, most children get paid tuition classes, whereas this is denied to poor children, and ultimately ends in school drop- outs. For this reason, ABC has created these tutoring centres to improve the access to quality education for all. Teachers, selected by ABC, carry out the tutoring classes.

Asha Bhavan Centre, in collaboration with Queensland University, has introduced the LEAP-CP Program (Learning through Everyday Activities with Parents of infants with Cerebral Palsy). This initiative addresses the distinctive challenges faced by families with a child with CP in low-middle income countries (LMICs). The LEAP-CP model integrates both early detection and intervention, uniquely tailored to the context. The intervention is community-based, delivered peer-to-peer in homes. The program encompasses parent education (covering learning, maternal mental health, bonding, feeding, and nutrition), goal-directed tasks, and learning games to foster cognitive development. Each geographical area incorporates a qualified therapist or social worker to support the Community Disability Worker (peer trainer) in a continuous feed-forward and feedback loop.

Asha Bhavan Centre runs a special school affiliated by Department of Disability Affairs under Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment Government of India. The Special school is designed to welcome the children from Kathila CCI Children’s home, to provide them with quality education given by special educators. They also go to regular school. The Special school also welcomes children from outside of ABC, to provide adequate therapy and education. Often special children don’t have access to an education tailored for them, so Asha Bhavan Centre created the Home along with the School to address this issue.