The right to education is one of the basic human rights for ensuring a healthy and happy society. But in India, less than half of the children aged 6 – 14 years go to School. Many of them are subjected to working as Child labour owing to their parent’s poor socio economic condition. They are marginalized and socially excluded. Dejected, ignorant and aimless, most of them resort to unhealthy activities leading to unsafe atmosphere and become the cause of depletion in the law and order situation of the country and greatly hamper the progress of the nation.
At Empowering Minds (EM), we firmly believe that, each and every child, irrespective of his / her socio - economic status has the potential to grow up into a strong, healthy and a happy individual which in turn leads to a prospering and happier nation. All that is required is to ‘empower the mind’ of the child. It is thus important for each one of us to reach out and make sure that Children of India, especially from the marginalized society do not have to stay away or struggle for acquiring, at least, the basic levels of education and health.
With this aim in mind EM runs two primary level community schools, catering to about 125 children from the marginalized section. The respective Schools are located in Arthala- an urban slum of Ghaziabad and in Pipiganj- a small rural township near Gorakhpur, both in the state of U.P. The children coming here belong to extremely low income group families who cannot afford to send their children to Schools. EM acts as a bridge between these out of School kids and the mainstreamed education system. Apart from formal and non-formal education, health check ups & medicines, nutrition, books and uniforms distribution, festival celebrations and sports activities are conducted.
The budget of this program is around 6.5 lakhs for both the school.