Wings of Doon - An After School Support Program

We firmly believe future is created, not predetermined. With this in mind we approach every new child, every new community with the determination to try and make a difference. EVERY ACCOMPLISHMENT STARTS WITH THE DECISION TO TRY!

At Aasraa, we aim to ensure that every marginalized child in Dehradun thrive under our care. Our “Street Smart” program has succeeded in providing basic literacy education to the children who never attended any school or had been the drop-outs. With an objective of mainstreaming them into regular schools along with improving their health and nutrition levels, the program makes certain that more and more children in Dehradun get access to better education. However, these children, due to their poor backgrounds and lack of exposure, struggle hard to cope with the academic standards at regular schools. This leads to their poor performance and gradual sense of failure in the classrooms. This is where Aasraa’s after school support program ‘Wings of Doon’ plays a crucial role in ensuring the quality of their learning. This program fortifies the impact of our Street Smart program; raising the standards of our children in schools and radically improving their ability to grasp in classrooms. Our Wings program has grown from 50 children to over 1058 across 8 centres in Dehradun.

This month, we are happy to share with you Mansi’s story which perfectly exemplifies our commitment to transform the lives of children like her into meaningful existences.

Mansi's father suffered from a mental disability which wasn't diagnosed or treated. His mother wanted to get him married and eventually "bought" a bride for him for INR 10,000. He used to do odd jobs at a tea stall in his locality and earned a small amount from this. The primary bread-earner in the family is Mansi's grandmother who works as domestic help in two separate houses. It was an extremely dissatisfied marriage and Mansi's mother abandoned the family when Mansi was just 6 months old and the older son Himanshu was just a year and half.

Mansi's father has an older sister who is bedridden. She sustained severe head injuries when she fell from the roof of her house as a kid and has been partially paralyzed since then. So also lives in the same house and the grandmother takes care of her as well. Last year, Mansi's father passed away. Mansi, who was a regular at Aasraa's Street Smart program stopped coming to study after that. Only when our outreach team went to her house, we found the problems that the family was going through.

Mansi's grandmother is now taking care of Mansi, her brother and her own daughter who is disabled. Aasraa is trying to help her by every means. It costs us INR 18,000 per year to support her education in school which includes school fees, stationary and uniforms. Over and above this, we currently support Mansi's family with rations and medical aid. This amounts to roughly INR 30,000 per year.

We are proud to share with you all that Mansi has been recently mainstreamed into Sneha Doon Academy in Dehradun. Under the Wings program, she discovered the joy and infinite wonder of learning in classrooms and interacting with peers at the school. A sincere pupil, who likes playing with her dolls, she dreams of a world beyond the classroom. Aasraa believes that with her quiet determination, Mansi has strong potential to leave her mark upon the world.

We are extremely grateful to our donors and well wishers for their support and encouragement towards our programs and children. Their unwavering support has strengthened our capacity and resources to provide greater benefits to the children at our learning centres. We strongly believe that together we can and we will bring the positive change to their lives.