Seva Sahayog Foundation

The Foundation strives to transform the urban slums and their people through education, healthcare and self-reliance. It provides educational support to children of slum dwellers through setting up study centres, libraries, imparting computer education and counselling centres.

Healthcare is taken care of through providing mentoring to adolescent girls, conducting vaccination drives and providing food and nutrition. Self-reliance is addressed by enabling the creation of self-help groups to empower women to stand on their own feet and vocational education and guidance are also provided.

This programme enables students from low-income backgrounds to pursue higher education and achieve self-reliance. It identifies meritorious students for the programme and conducts checks to verify the socioeconomic condition of the students and their families. The students are assigned mentors who guide them through their academic courses. Fees are directly disbursed to the institutions where the candidate studies and based on economic conditions, books, travel and other facilities are also supported.

It conducts skill development programmes and provides training to women, to strengthen their capacities and make them independent. The women are trained to manufacture sanitary napkins, also at the same time informed and equipped with the knowledge of hygiene and usage of the napkins leading to additional income through the sale of napkins. A seva fair is held to market products made by these women in partnership with corporate houses which display these handicrafts for sale on general occasions and special ones like Rakhi, Diwali and New Year.

It provides school kits to underprivileged children, to encourage them towards literacy. The kit consists of educational supplies like a school bag, notebooks, pen, pencil, drawing book, colours and a compass box that varies as per the grades the children are in.

To empower women in the space of health and hygiene, the Foundation installed napkin manufacturing machines within slums to provide additional income to poor women in addition to increasing awareness of menstrual health. It provides incentives to the women for the sale of napkins. This leads to economic assistance and also forwards the cause of menstrual health and hygiene.

School Kit is a signature program of Seva Sahayog. The program is started 15 year ago. In this program we provide school kit to the underprivileged students. Till date we reached to the 26 districts in Maharashtra and 5 other states. The program is based on DAD (donation, assembly and distribution) concept. It is divided into 5 stages like 1) Survey and requirement collection 2) Fund raising 3) Procurement 4) Assembly 5) Distribution. This kit includes school bag, notebook, geometry material, writing material, drawing book and colouring material etc. We distribute this material according to the standard.

States

Maharashtra

Menstruation is a commonly seen natural problem in each house, but never talked openly due to lack of knowledge or some kind of awkwardness. In under developed communities or in vastis women even don’t get sanitary pads properly. They don’t know how to dispose the thingTo overcome this problem Seva Sahayog started a project URMI, which tried to provide a proper information and been a source to women and young girls. Through this programme we arranged different workshops in schools and under privileged communities for girls and women. URMI also provides sanitary pads and reusable cloth pads at very affordable price. Since 2018 Project Urmi has provided more than 2,63,500 sanitary napkins to around 11000 women and girls, through 113+ awareness sessions all over Pune. URMI also takes workshop on how to make Red-Dot Bags to avoid improper disposal of pads.s etc.

Special children have different problems. They are dependent on other peoples. They need special care and attention of their parents. Due to lack of awareness of the disease, people misbehaves with these children. Also they cannot afford the needed therapy. Sometimes accessibility to these rehabilitation centre is not that much easy. Due to the view of the people towards these children, admission in the schools is not that much easy.So Seva Sahayog thought to take care of these children. Basically we treat the children of age group 0 – 12 yrs. We studied about the disabilities of the special children. We focus on the disabilities like cerebral palsy, down syndrome etc. First we started home visits and treated the children by giving physiotherapy. But taking into consideration the need of the people we thought to start community based rehabilitation centre where we can treat these disabled children properly. Initially physiotherapy was given to the needy kids, but over a period need was identified for speech and special education. So we have started providing other therapies as welSo Seva Sahayog thought to take care of these children. Basically we treat the children of age group 0 – 12 yrs. We studied about the disabilities of the special children. We focus on the disabilities like cerebral palsy, down syndrome etc. First we started home visits and treated the children by giving physiotherapy. But taking into consideration the need of the people we thought to start community based rehabilitation centre where we can treat these disabled children properly. Initially physiotherapy was given to the needy kids, but over a period need was identified for speech and special education. So we have started providing other therapies as well.l.

District

Pune

Adolescent girls are facing so many problems like lack of self-awareness, gender discrimination, dropping from school due to distance, absence of female teachers, early assumption of domestic responsibilities, physical and sexual insecurity, early marriage, malnutSeva sahayog identified these problems and started ‘Kishori Vikas Prakalp and started to inform these girls about some issues like ‘good touch and bad touch’, hygiene, provide academic help etc.KVP provides information about personality development and provides career counselling. We conduct a program in three levels – one session per week. KVP runs 54 centres in Pune and 27 centres in Mumbai impacting 900 and 489 girls resp.rition etc.

Samutkarsha means Holistic development of Child from Urban Slums (Communities). Community Learning centers are set up inside the community for providing conducive environment to study. It is a after school program which supports value education of students along with improvement in Reading Writing

Special children have different problems. They are dependent on other peoples. They need special care and attention of their parents. Due to lack of awareness of the disease, people misbehaves with these children. Also they cannot afford the needed therapy. Sometimes accessibility to these rehabilitation centre is not that much easy. Due to the view of the people towards these children, admission in the schools is not that much easy.So Seva Sahayog thought to take care of these children. Basically we treat the children of age group 0 – 12 yrs. We studied about the disabilities of the special children. We focus on the disabilities like cerebral palsy, down syndrome etc. First we started home visits and treated the children by giving physiotherapy. But taking into consideration the need of the people we thought to start community based rehabilitation centre where we can treat these disabled children properly. Initially physiotherapy was given to the needy kids, but over a period need was identified for speech and special education. So we have started providing other therapies as welSo Seva Sahayog thought to take care of these children. Basically we treat the children of age group 0 – 12 yrs. We studied about the disabilities of the special children. We focus on the disabilities like cerebral palsy, down syndrome etc. First we started home visits and treated the children by giving physiotherapy. But taking into consideration the need of the people we thought to start community based rehabilitation centre where we can treat these disabled children properly. Initially physiotherapy was given to the needy kids, but over a period need was identified for speech and special education. So we have started providing other therapies as well.l.