CNJ Projects 2006

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CNJ Projects 2006
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Ashraya

• Asha CNJ Know Your Projects Session
• October 2006

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Ashraya Background

• Residential re-habilitation center for challenged
  girl children, from poor economic background
• Located in Kollam Dist, Kerala. Started by an
  individual Mr. Venugopalan, in 2000
• Severely under-privileged cross section
• Challenged, Distressed economic background, Girl
  child
• Mentally challenged (cerebral palsy, mental
  retardation), Physically challenged (multiple
  disabilities, polio)
• All from Below Poverty Line families mostly
  broken families, single mothers/addicted father,
  other children to take care of.
• Are generally ill-treated, abused or at best
  ignored
• Very rare chances of being offered chances of
  development and treatment with dignity,
  acceptance and love

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Ashraya Mission

• Ashraya is an abode for challenged girl
  children, hailing from distressed economic
  background. Ashraya's mission is to mould each
  challenged daughter in to a self reliant and
  dignified individual with a will to successfully
  face the problems and challenges caused by their
  disability.
• Ashraya provides the following to its daughters
• Accommodation, Food, Clothing, Medicare,
  Corrective Surgery Physiotherapy
• Well rounded education based on their skill level
  and abilities (differently abled, not disabled!)
• Most importantly, love, affection and a sense of
  belonging that is absent in their own domestic
  background (home, not an institution)
• Statistics
• 24 children (13 children with special needs)
• Age group 5-14
• 5 Full time teachers, 4 part time

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Ashraya Activities

• Special Education
• Catered to each child based on their nature,
  level of functioning etc
• Regular schooling
• Govt. school (state syllabus)
• Co-curricular and recreational
• Sports, games, dance, music, painting, outings,
  get-togethers
• Livelihood oriented pre-vocational training
• Develop sense of satisfaction, self-esteem.
  Computer education, stitching embroidery, craft
  work and clay modeling, drawing, cooking and
  domestic chores
• Speech and sound therapy
• Classical music, mantra chanting to improve
  memory retention, and music as a medium of
  expressing their needs and emotions
• Early intervention program
• Below 6 years, sensory motor training, sensory
  stimulation programs
• Physical exercise, yoga, classical dance, martial
  arts
• Teachers training and staff development program
• All teachers are themselves challenged (physical,
  blind)
• Sends teachers for training programs including
  special education, computer training, spoken
  English, yoga and meditation, attending seminars
• Provided artificial limbs, corrective surgery etc
• Awareness sessions for school-going children
• Awareness sessions for school-going children
  about disability, their role as tomorrows
  citizens in caring for their challenged brethren

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Ashraya Impact

• Impact on children
• Initially most children have severe learning
  disabilities
• Remarkable improvement in 1-2 years (conventional
  and creative techniques, individual attention
  round the clock)
• Some special kids could be tutored almost like a
  normal child
• Drooling, and such other physical manifestations
  of mental retardation reduced appreciably and on
  a sustained basis
• Asha volunteers who have made site-visits have
  all remarked about the self-confidence,
  well-groomed nature, and above all the
  spectacular display of creative skills by Ashraya
  daughters!!
• On their competitive spirit, self-confidence and
  overcoming their under-privileges
• Regular school going Ashraya daughters with all
  their challenges did compete with able-bodied
  classmates of their school youth festival and won
  six first prizes for various cultural events.  It
  is not all. Two of them were selected for the
  sub-district cultural meet where over 25 schools
  participated and both of them proved their metal

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Asha CNJ and Ashraya
Year Purpose Amount (USD)
2004-Dec Infrastructure (dining/hall/toilets) 7,000
2005-Nov Pending works (dining table, cots, etc) 4,500
2006-Aug Yearly Recurring costs (60 of total) 6,500
2006-Aug Community awareness program 2,500

• Very low over-head
• Punctual in accounts reporting, project updates
• 5 site-visits (3 people) made
• Purdue chapter2,600 in 2004

• Overall our volunteers have found Ashraya to be a
  truly worthy project to support motivation,
  dedication and execution in 2006 Ashraya came 1
  in the project selection ranking by CNJ

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Summary

• Why Asha should continue/increase support for
  Ashraya?
• Ashraya is creating sustained impact in changing
  the lifes of challenged girl children
• Trust-relationship over 2 years
• Very creative and encourages us to replicate
  Ashraya models/ideas across other projects
• Wonderful learning opportunity for volunteers
• Challenges
• Very high quality (an extremely worthy aspect)
  brings higher costs long term economic
  sustainability
• Single point of failure
• Uncertainty regarding future of child after
  passing out

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Future Plans

• Residential Artificial limb unit project
• Effectiveness of artificial limbs for kids
  depends mostly on close monitoring and
  modification during the initial period
• Ashraya to set-up a residential artificial limb
  unit, primarily for poor disabled children (42K
  USD NR 5K USD/year)
• Theme Mobility to enable education
• Ashraya proposal Ashas help in setting up the
  facility. If successful Ashraya can help Asha to
  replicate it elsewhere. (Ashraya for Mobility,
  Asha for Education!)
• Ways to help
• Monitory (WAH proposal, present to bigger
  chapters)
• Know-how
• details about how such centers are run in the US
  and else-where
• Possible collaboration between Ashraya and such
  centers
• Other funding sources (Indian software
  companies/more)
• Using our network to find out and reach such
  companies
• Making presentations/project proposal material

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How can YOU help?

• General interaction/awareness about the project
  should improve (only a few volunteers know about
  the project well!)
• Specific tasks
• Know-how/networking with similar centers in US
  (1-2 active volunteers)
• Making proposals for ALU (1 active volunteer)
• Other potential areas
• Technology (any technology that may help
  mentally/physically challenged children)
• Applying Ashraya models across other Asha
  projects
• Other creative proposals?

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Ashraya has a dream, One of our children who is
in high school today and totally paralyzed below
the waist appears to have in her the spark for
being led for a professional course in Medicine. 
We are prepared to assist her to any level in
this venture.  We know it is a difficult dream
but seeing the dedication of our volunteers it
doesnt seen impossible to achieve it. Ashraya
should be a developmental arena for the
challenged