Street to School - Mainstreaming Street Children

Aasraa has proudly grown from 35 street and slum children to 1800 since its inception in 2009. However, there are still numerous children in Dehradun who are willing to learn and go to school but are unable to access the necessary platforms. Children who rag pick cannot attend school, the timings clash. Economic necessity forces them to work. Rag picking children start at dawn and do not finish before the start of school and as they cannot enter school late, they forfeit any chance at literacy.

Aasraa wanted to address the issues of illiteracy and lack of skill training amongst children and young adults living on the streets & slums of Dehradun. Both issues stop the children from leading a respectable life in the future. While the rest of the world progresses into the 21st century, these children are still far away from accessing the right opportunity to learn and earn a decent living due to their social and economic conditions.

Traditionally, we have rented buildings in the slum area and converted them into learning centres. But buildings are expensive to rent and run. Location of the building is of prime importance as proximity to the slum works in favor of the success of the project. If these children cannot go to school, Aasraa decided to take the school to them through these centres. These centres are buses that have been modified to become a high tech classroom on wheels. The buses are parked next to any slum and provide education or skills to children all day at various locations at any time.

With a huge push in computer aided learning across all our programs, our focus going forward is to incorporate ‘smart classes’ into our teaching methodology. When the world is progressing at a rate beyond our imagination, there should not be any stone left unturned to bring the benefits of computer technology to these children. We are now able to reach out to maximum amount of children in different slums at different times. As of 31^st August 2017, with our 4 mobile learning classrooms including 1 Mobile Computer Lab (MCL), we are impacting over 720 street and slum children in Dehradun on an everyday basis.

The MCL has 10 computer systems and is able to hold a class of maximum 20 students at a time. The bus is also internet enabled and has power back up. Our MCL alone reaches 160 children per day, at schools and slums across Dehradun. Children not only develop the necessary IT skills but also get the opportunity to explore and read about different topics that fascinate them.  

Aasraa’s vision is to equip all of our staff and the staff in government schools in computer aided learning techniques, slowly making way for smart classrooms. So far we have conducted day long training sessions with teachers at GIC Dobhalwala, CNI Girls Inter College and multiple rounds of training with Aasraa teachers. As informed by the government school officials, there has been drastic improvement in children’s attendance after Aasraa’s initiated efforts to include computer aided learning in classrooms.