At the core of Sharana’s work is a commitment to enable children to fully claim their rights to education. Too often, children’s education from socio-economically disadvantaged families is neglected, often charged with the responsibility of caring for younger siblings, or earn. Sharana seeks to create an infrastructure that supports them and enables them to enroll or resume their formal education.
Our back to school programme is a conscious attempt to go beyond individual sponsorship and collective sponsorship programs, where conventionally intervention has meant that children receive support for school fees, books and notebooks, backpacks, school supplies, healthcare, and homework help. Our strength is in our outreach where a significant qualitative change is aimed at so that parents take measures in vital outward aspects such as health, nutrition and sanitation as well as understand and gradually take responsibility for the education of their own children. The Back to School is a programme active in rural areas as well as slums in and around Pondicherry where the need of such an intervention is most evident.
Via other programs targeted at enhancing and facilitating rural development, Sharana seeks to support parents to earn livelihoods so that they can in turn support their children’s right to pursue a formal education
Sharana has also developed an Awareness through Sports and Games Program. This is an important project that not only gives access to sports and games to children from rural backgrounds and slums but plays probably the most effective and impactful role in sensitizing the children and their communities about vital social and environmental issues such as cleanliness, waste segregation and personal and collective hygiene via these pedagogically conceived games. Such a programme we believe is a vital mechanism by which children become agents of change in their environments.
Since its inception in 2000 approximately 5000 families have been touched by Sharana, and at present over 1000 children are receiving assistance from Sharana through Sponsorship and other mediums, in Pondicherry and 20 other villages/areas.