Cycle project for children of Narmadamalay

Gone are the days when we spoke of recycling plastic, paper and clothes, now it is the turn of the humble bicycle to be recycled in a bid to empower poor and needy children.

The innocent children in this region work in the fields and do odd jobs for their families’ survival.  They have to travel a long distance to reach their schools.  With a twin objective of providing childhood joy and a mode of transport, an initiative was taken to collect old and unused bicycles from Thane/Mumbai region, transporting and getting it repaired and distributing them to these children. Two truckloads of 73 cycles along with  clothes, school bags, caps, stationery, sports equipment, and many more things were transported to Narmadalaya Ashram at Lepa on April 16, 2013.

Solar Panels – A Green Project at Narmadalaya, Mandleshwar

On April 18th, 2013, a landmark day for NARMADA, solar energy power system has been successfully installed at the Narmadalaya ashram at Lepa Village.

A combination of AC/DC systems has been installed which generates  optimum amount of electricity required for normal functioning of the ashram. Today these system supplies electricity during the long load shedding hours and help Narmadalaya to carry out its activities unhindered.  Due to the extreme load shedding condition (for almost 12 hours of the day) Narmadalaya was not able to carry out its activities. Today the ashram is able to function without any disruption.

Current Activities of Narmadalaya

All the children are in the age group of 6 to 14 years and majority of them are out of school.  After NARMADA’s intervention some of the children have  been enrolled in Government  schools. The centers run for 4 hours during the day after which the children help their parents out in the fields or tend the cattle. Students of several government-run middle schools and high schools in the region  do not have science lab facilities. They cannot perform science experiments.  

They have to depend only on textbooks to write answers to questions in the  examinations. They thus lag behind their urban counterparts. More important,  they do not develop scientific temperament.

NARMADA has undertaken a modest initiative to overcome these lacunae  by starting a mobile science Laboratory. A van carrying scientific equipment  visits nearby villages as per a well-laid out schedule. Science experiments  are demonstrated to the middle school students who can carry out the  experiments under the guidance of the teachers and our volunteers.

 

No.	Name of the village	No. Of Students
1	Lepa	107
2	Amalatha	145
3	Naharkhedi	103
4	Sasabad	140
5	Bhayapur	101
6	Tigriyaon	110
7	Mogaya	75
8	Nagaya	79

News

• Narmadalaya
• Puja got her vision back

News Archives

• April 2013

Puja - Got Her Vision Back

Puja Nindava, resident of Lepa Punarvas was a visually  challenged 12 years old girl. After a primary check up at our weekly medical camp, she was taken to Dr Saraf, a well known ophthalmologist at Khargone – a district headquarters. It was observed by him that Puja had cataract since birth and that was the reason of her very poor eye sight. She was operated upon by Dr. Saraf on 16^th March 2013 successfully and got her vision back. Indeed a matter of pride and happiness for us all.

Narmadalaya - Vision and Mission

Bharati Thakur, the founder of NARMADA is an avid traveler, nature lover, a well-known writer and a former Central Government employee in Maharashtra, gave up her lucrative career for NARMADA.

A rebel in her family, Bharati left home in her mid 30s to work in the far
away and neglected areas of the North Eastern parts of India. 
She was instrumental in setting up a school and in
bringing the tribal children of those areas back to the school, 
where otherwise, going to school was nowhere a priority.

In 2005, Bharati and two of her friends undertook a 3200
km journey on the banks of the Narmada river. The journey, an arduous walk over various
terrains has great significance in the canons of Hinduism and
even in other spiritual disciplines. It is called Narmada Parikrama – circumambulation of the river Narmada.  Bharati completed this journey in 5 months.

This journey helped her see the condition of people living on the banks of Narmada – she understood their viewpoint on the Narmada Valley Development Plan and witnessed the reality on the ground. She  came across people in the Nimar region who were severely affected and deprived; she instantly decided to help them out. This region is very fertile and gets bumper crops of wheat, cotton, soya bean, and pulses. Yet, prosperity that should be associated with the fertility of land is not visible. It is essentially because the proportion of land holders and landless labors is inverse. Growing number of child labor has resulted in increase in school dropouts. The number of such school dropouts is very alarming. Most of these children work on farms and are engaged in agriculture activities like plucking cotton, chilies, and tending the cattle etc. Girls bear the brunt of managing the household chores and looking after their young siblings when their parents are away on the fields working on daily wages.

 In July 2009 Bharati came to Mandleshwar, a small town in Madhya Pradesh on the banks of Narmada. She started teaching school drop outs and students very weak in studies at Lepa, a place on the south banks of .Narmada. The overwhelming response by the drop out students for her endeavor encouraged Bharati to expand her activities in few nearby villages with the help of local womenfolk.  In 2010, with the help of like-minded people of Mandleshwar, Bharati set up Nimar Abhyudaya Rural Management and Development Association (NARMADA).

Vision and Mission:

(www.narmadalaya.com)

NARMADA works towards integrated development of the people in the Nimar Region of Madhya Pradesh, through: -

• Spreading education awareness.
• Providing quality education (combined with constant quality monitoring).
• Providing employment opportunities for women through the education centers.
• Promoting leadership qualities among women and children.
• Encouraging community participation and ownership.
• Create public awareness through campaigns, seminars, conferences and workshops in the field of education, environment and health.
• Impart education beyond formal learning by providing infrastructure & programs  that will not only create educated & aware citizens but also provide them with livelihood and  make them self sustained.
• Run programs for the development of affordable and sustainable system for livelihood, women and children education and environment protection.
• Implement and sustain long term projects focusing on Health, Education and Environment.