Udyam Prayas

What we do?

Udyam Prayas is a non-profit organization working to equip underprivileged children with the education, skills and character they need to lead empowered lives. Udyam addresses non formal education of underprivileged children by providing them with what they miss out on, due to their poor social and economic backgrounds.

Udyam provides academic assistance and addresses the personality development and value education needs of underprivileged children. Ideally these needs should be addressed by the families of the children; however families of underprivileged children are unable to fulfill these needs because of their socio-economic conditions. Udyam intervenes to fill in this gap.

Why we do it?

UN prescribes primary education as one of the eight Millennium Development goals to reduce poverty. In line with this, we believe that imparting “holistic education” will enable underprivileged children to empower their lives and help them reach the next level of economic prosperity. Udyam complements the formal schooling setup to impart “holistic education” by providing underprivileged children with academic assistance and by addressing personality development and value education needs.

How we do it?

There are broadly three sets of activities undertaken with the students and their parents at Udyam to meet the objective of  “holistic development” of students:

Academic activities: Remedial classes for English / Maths / Science are held six days a week. The curriculum of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (or Each One Teach One) is used as reference. Students also get personal assistance from teachers and regular assignments after classes. Their progress is tracked regularly by class participation sessions and periodic tests. The focus of our teaching is to help students improve subject fundamentals, given most students are much below par in comparison to their formal school standards.

Non academic activities: Students are engaged in multiple non-academic activities with the idea of imparting value education, facilitating personality development and having fun (to keep them interested).

1. Dance, singing, painting and craft making events are often organized. Students regularly perform before a broader audience in a formal setting
2. Sessions on topics such as values, hygiene, gender equality, drug abuse, reproduction, career opportunities, politics etc are conducted
3. Monthly educational outings to places such as museums, historic places are organized

Engaging with parents: Regular meetings are held with parents with the following objectives:

1. Ensuring that the students are getting the right atmosphere for development at home
2. Parents are enthusiastic about the education of their children (given the fact that drop out rate of children in government schools is very high)

Target group

Udyam caters to underprivileged children residing near AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) in South Delhi:

1. About 60 children, aged between 5-17 years, residing in slums / servant quarters in areas near AIIMS come to Udyam
2. Almost all of these children are enrolled in the nearby NDMC Senior Secondary School, Ansari Nagar in standards 1st to 12th
3. Most children stay in poor living conditions in homes with 4-5 family members sharing 1-2 rooms and other basic amenities non-existent or below par.
4. Parents of these children are wage laborers with a household income ranging between per month (INR 1000 – 5000 per month)
5. These parents are illiterate and are unable provide academic assistance. Moreover due to shortage of cash, these parents often force their children to dropout from school to involve them in jobs to generate cash.

Location of Operations

We currently operate from the residence of the founder Mrs. Neeru S Junega. Classes are held in the backyard of the house. We are in the processes of finding an alternate location in order to scale up our operations and provide a more formal setup with better facilities in place.