ISRI Report

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jinal Parikh

Submitted By:
67 – Archi shah
68 - Ashna shah
69 – Harsh shah
73 – Parshwa shah
76 – Siddharth shah
Introduction to the Samvedana
Samvedana is a non-profit organization registered under Bombay Public Trust Act, 1950.
Samvedana works for the integrated development of slums with a focus on education,
nutrition and skill development of socially and economically deprived children, youth and
women. Through the years, Samvedana has evolved into a highly organised and an esteemed
organization that can proudly claim to have built the future of marginalised children. They
have touched lives if 1.25 lac people and is registered as a charitable institution exempted
under section 80G.

Samvedana has an integrated education programme to nurture the child when infant by
focusing on nutrition, provide firm foundations through primary education, quality education
through high school, hand holding to the youth in college and skill education through
vocational skills. It has 8 initiatives in the urban area namely Akshara, Gyaan, Eklavya,
Sakhi, Mitra, Udgreev, Sattva and Sahyog. In the rural area, they are present under the name
of Vasant Pathshala were they run schools. They also run pre-schools which are known as
Baalghars in those villages. Apart from education initiatives, they have also been working for
the malnourished children as a partner with the government’s ICDS project. Under this
initiative Samvedana monitors and adds value to 76 Aanganwadis.

Driven by the passion for development of children, Samvedana constantly strives to fulfil the
purpose of sensitizing the society and transforming lives. They work towards creating
opportunities where aspirations turn into achievements. Other than supplementary education,
Samvedana also develops the skills of children through co-curricular and vocational activities
and takes care of their nutritional requirements. It holistically uplifts their environment
through quality education; where education means not just academics buts also welfare
programmes, outdoor exposures, health, hygiene awareness programmes, event celebrations
and inclusions. The organization has been empowering the socially and economically
marginalised children with all round knowledge and education, bridging the inadequacies of
their lives. It has also provided a platform for like-minded people to come together and serve
the society.

Vision

To be a catalyst for sustainable impact in the area of nutrition, education and skill building
amongst the underprivileged, considering their family as a unit and inclusions at the core.

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Genesis
Samvedana in Sanskrit means Compassion. Founder, Mrs. Janki Vasant sowed the seed of
compassion in Ahmedabad by establishing Samvedana in 2002, with unflinching support of
her husband and co-founder Mr. Hiten Vasant and guidance of veteran Academician and co-
founder, Mr. B.M Peerzada.

Mrs. Janki Vasant ingrained her inner strength from parents. Her father, Late Mr. Hariprasad
Vyas was a leader behind the revolution ‘Maha Gujarat Chalval’ that gave Gujarat a separate
identity from Maharashtra in 1960. He dedicated his life for the cause of communal harmony
through his journey. Her mother, an academician, a state minister, gained immense respect
for her commitment to women causes during her life.

Mrs. Vasant was one of the victims of the plane hijack at Karachi in 1986, on which film
‘Neerja’ is picturised. This had brought her very close to death and taught her deep rooted
lessons on values like compassion, empathy and humanity. These are the major influences of
her childhood which shaped her belief system into prioritizing for larger good of the
community by nurturing her inner strength.

Her compassion was first channelized back in 2001, when Ahmedabad was destroyed after
the earthquake. Along with her husband Mr. Hiten Vasant, they put up an earthquake shelter,
where over 20,000 people stayed for 2 months. Here, they set up the infrastructure, mobilized
the right resources, inspired adequate partners to ensure that inmates had the right
environment and the right access to guidance both informative and spiritual. This earthquake
camp was visited by the then Prime Minister as well as media from all over the world as it
was a sheer example of how two normal individuals could instill hope amongst the survivors
and provide inspiration to many by their simple act of humanity. This very grass-root level
experience of human service inspired her deeply to make service her core area of life.

With a strong desire for nation building, her passion for children and a deep seeded trust that
education empowers, she was driven to work for the betterment of children. That is when she
founded Samvedana, a platform to create opportunities and interdependence through
inclusive synergy. She started working in the slums with informal education and soon
adopted a public school. What started as a remedial bridge program with 30 children, has
today reached to and worked with over 125,000 beneficiaries over the past 15 years.

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Samvedana’s Initiatives

1. Akshara

Akshara is about their commitment towards building strong foundations of education at the
grass-root levels with the belief that not just education, but quality education is the right to
ever under-privileged child. Akshara centres are present in Nava Vadaj and Vastrapur slum
communities.

Vision:

 To provide access to quality education and comprehensive welfare programmes to

develop a learning system for marginalised children.
 To evolve a learning system for marginalised children with family as its basic unit.

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What Akshara does:

 Apart from regular supplementary teaching, it holds special classes and builds
programs for children with special learning difficulties.
 It provides a library, and audio-visual room and a computer lab.
 It organizes educational visits and picnics to provide first hand experiences and help
children explore the world around them.
 It provides daily nutrition.

2. Gyaan

Gyaan provides high school and higher secondary tuition support at Samvedana which plays
a crucial role in manifesting the aspirations of deserving students, who despite all obstacles,
social and economic, manage to reach high school on their own merit.

Vision:

 Support the slum kids with tutoring and mentoring in their quest towards a better
future through higher education.

What Gyaan does:

 Supports private high school education (Std. 8 to 12) through daily remedial classes.
 Organises various workshops throughout the year on gender sensitization, computer
software, personality grooming, socio-economic development, environment
awareness etc.
 Arranges educational field trips.
 Facilitates admission process to high schools and colleges.

3. Eklavya

Eklavya was initiated in 2003 to support deserving and economically constrained children
through financial benefits and scholarships. These children are identified based on their
academic excellence and constrained monthly income of their parents. The financial
assistance covers school fees, uniform, other education materials, daily tuition classes at
Samvedana, counsellor’s support, computer education and additional workshops offered.
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Vision:

 To lend a hand in carving the future of a child

What Eklavya does:

 Helps meritorious but economically constrained students to pursue higher education.

 Nominates deserving students for scholarships.
 Provides 3 hour daily tuition classes.
 Organizes additional workshops round the year.
 Mentors and well as counsels students and parents for career guidance.

4. Sakhi
This initiative looks into integrated development of communities around centres. At
Sakhi, parents are updated and counselled about their children’s future. Children are
assisted to deal with trauma, abuse, neglect and deprivation. Above all, it teaches the
children to grow beyond these realities. Ailing patients are supported and families are
assisted with nutrition kits.

Vision:

 A child’s journey towards destiny essentially determines the richness of experiences

enjoyed and success achieved. And what each child essentially needs is a handholding
- and Sakhi offers that hand. Counselling offered by Sakhi is integral to Samvedana’s
projects as the team visits children at their homes and digs deep to discover the deep
rooted challenges in their lives. Counselling is supported by numerous workshops that
emphasize on strengthening their morale, guiding them in the required directions and
empowering them knowledge.

What Sakhi does:

 Organizes home visits to explore their environment.

 Provides counselling to the children and parents.
 Organizes regular teacher training.

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  Conducts parent’s meetings, various awareness programmes, educative workshops
and health camps at regular intervals with parents, students, partner-schools for the
development of the community.

5. Mitra

Mitra creates opportunities for all to serve and experience within them a space of genuine
love and goodwill for others and see how it affects them personally. It is an experiment to
help them recognize their true human nature and get connected with the roots.

Vision:

 To encourage voluntary participation and to expose children to new avenues through

volunteer driven activities.

What Mitra does:

 Provides a platform of exposure to the less privileged children through Happeee

Diwali Mela and Happeee Summer Workshops.
 Organizes volunteer driven programmes in all the different initiatives round the year.
 Provides a platform to the volunteers to spend time with the less fortunate ones and
share their knowledge, thus creating a sensitized society.

6. Udgreev

Udgreev is a solution beyond education. It prepares the marginal youth towards economic
stability, a life with unfettered self-confidence through economic independence. It is not just
about economic independence but also about pragmatic understanding of the world and
building a brighter future. Udgreev’s main goal is to link the creativity and talent of the youth
to the skill requirements of the market, so that they increasingly become economically
independent.

Vision:

 To lend support to the youth and women so that they can stand on their own feet with
pride and confidence, by developing their vocational skills.

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What Udgreev does:

 It provides vocational education through expert faculties.

 It organizes exhibitions showcasing the creations and talent of adolescent youth and
women which enables them to earn while learning.

7. Sahyog

Vision:

 To create opportunities to be socially responsible and responsive, leading to

sustainable and inclusive development.

What Sahyog does:

 Organizes a charity corporate cricket tournament wherein corporates and business

houses play for a cause of education.
 Provides opportunities to:
o Utilize corporate funds for CSR towards education
o Plan employee engagement activities with the communities
o Support nutrition at Samvedana’s centres, celebrate festivals as well as
birthdays.
o Connect with deserving students for scholarships and mentor them.
o Sponsor annual events like Summer Camps and Diwali Mela.
o Take up the primary school; high school; vocational skills education centres
under their umbrella.
o Sponsor a teacher or a child at different centres.

8. Sattva

Samvedana has partnered with ICDS and adopted 76 Aanganwadis in Ahmedabad through
project ‘Sattva’. Sattva is their commitment to over 5000 beneficiaries, most of them from
slums or low income areas. This grass-root level connection with women and children
improves infant mortality rate. This makes Samvedana a partner in nation building towards a
higher Social Progressive index (SPI).

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Our objective with Sattva is to foster an active and responsible partnership with government
projects to support welfare of child and women through nourished living. By providing the
right aid to curb malnourishment we envision to partner in nation building and collectively
working towards higher Social Progress Index (SPI) of our nation.

Vision:

 To partner with the government and shoulder responsibility by running Aaganwadi

Centres under the Integrated Child Development System (ICDS) project of the
government.
 To fight the high child mortality rate in the country by monitoring nutrition, health
and hygiene of children in the Aanganwadis.
 To solve challenges of malnourishment amongst pregnant women, lactating mothers
and infants between the age of 0 to 6 years.
 To conduct various workshops and welfare events for adolescent girls, pregnant
mothers as well as lactating mothers thus elevating and empowering their lives.

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Activities Undertaken

Weekend Window
Weekend Window is a super charged up, high on energy, loaded with creativity and
quirkiness and colourful high-end 3 day flea market organized in Ahmedabad. It has
shopping, food, entertainment, music, creativity, installations, art and activities for kids.

Samvedana has been a part of this flea market for the last 7 seasons. We helped the students
of the Udgreev project put up a stall at Weekend Window. The Udgreev students make
various products such as candles, books, folders, trays and coasters with Madhubani art on it,
tie-dye dupattas etc. At first, we learnt from them how to make a few products. We then
helped them in making the products for the Weekend Window stall. We also helped them in
pricing and packing the products. At Weekend Window, we along with the Udgreev students
also put up Madhubani Art workshop for the visitors. We helped the Udgreev students with
installation of the stall and helped them manage the stall for the 3 days of the market. We
were successful in selling those products to a large number of people and also were able to
impart information about Samvedana and its different undertakings and how they were
contributing to the betterment of the society. People were delighted that by buying these
products they were helping the young women to be self sufficient.

We had also created the concept of happiness bank for which we had decorated a few boxes
as per the christmas theme. We had placed these boxes at the entrance of the weekend
window in which people could donate books, clothes, stationary, food packets, toys and
money which will be further distributed to the students of the Samvedana foundation. We
were successful in gathering a huge amount of items and a large sum of money donated by
the visitors of the flea market.

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We also had the task of explaining the role of Samvedana as an NGO and how it is working
at different levels to provide a better future to those in need and how each individual can be
part of this organization either by volunteering or by donating any spare items to the NGO.
We thus have created a huge database for our NGO by listing down the details of the visitors
who wanted to be part of it and volunteer for us or wanted to donate spare books, clothes, and
toys for the children of the NGO.

Volunteering @ Anganwadi’s

Samvedana was given the opportunity by the state government to help them with their
aanganwadi programme which provides primary education to underprivileged kids and also
provide them the nutrition rich meals every day. Samvedana is working at 76 Aanganwadis
under its ‘Baal Ghar’ programme for education of children under the age of 6 years and also
educating their mothers about the importance of hygiene and nutrition for the better health of
their children.

We as volunteers would conduct the classes at the Thaltej aanganwadi where we would use
audio-visual medium to provide supplementary teaching to the kids and also interact with the
teachers to give them a better perspective of this initiative and how together we can bring a
change in the life of these children and their parents and also help them understand the
importance of education.

Impact to Self, Group and the Organization

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As an individual, I feel satisfied with myself that I am contributing to the society, albeit, in a
small way. I feel proud of myself and whenever a child's wish is fulfilled, it makes me happy.
It gave me the opportunity to grow as a person. Working with Samvedana gave me an
exposure to the part of life that I had never dealt with before. While I thought I was teaching
students, the learning truly went in both directions.

As a group working for Samvedana has made us feel motivated and energized to try and
make a difference to our immediate surroundings, to make a difference in the lives of those
children who are less fortunate and don't have the opportunities that we have. To bring a
difference in the society and make these children's lives better. Samvedana has taught us that
we can actually go out there and help people instead of just talking about it. We learnt how
spending some hours with the underprivileged can transcend dreams to create realities and
can dispel the darkness of ignorance with the light of knowledge. Samvedana brought out
new colours within us, helped us discover a new side and learn much more about ourselves.

For any organization, volunteers are of utmost importance. We at Samvedana brought

together all that we could to create learning value for the students. We were able to raise
funds by selling Udgreev products. Since we were volunteers, Samvedana could save on
funds for the children which they would have had to spare incase of paid personnel. Our
interactions with the students brought together people of different backgrounds and were
successful in passing on some important points on various issues and bring a slight change in
their then orthodox thoughts. We also created awareness about Samvedana and its initiatives
to the people of the city at the weekend window and were successful in getting a great
response from them.

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Photos

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