Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Makar Sankranti - 14th January, 2014

Makar Sankranti celebrations at the Juhu Gandhigram-Mumbai Public School

The special significance attached to the celebration of Makar Sankranti, is Kite Flying.

Children hold colourful kite cut outs specially crafted to mark this special occasion

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Children at The St Thomas Mar Thoma School

Education, especially of girls, is often neglected among families from a poor socio-economic backgrounds. But hundreds of young girls have been enrolled in St Thomas Mar Thoma School in Kurar. These girls are excelling in their academic endeavours.

While sons sometimes make it into a class room, most don't complete schooling. But at St Thomas Mar Thoma School in Kurar, children are given every facility to concentrate on completing their education before joining the work force.


The over 700 children enrolled at St Thomas Mar Thoma School in Kurar have been excelling in both academics and extra curricular activities. This year our  100% of our 10th standard students passed their SSC exams.

St Thomas Mar Thoma School is located in one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Mumbai. Most homes are hand built and most parents are uneducated.

At St Thomas Mar Thoma School we understand that parents needs to be actively involved in their children's education. We have therefore started an adult education drive to educate the mothers.


Monday, January 6, 2014

The Story so Far

Dear Friends,

I have not been as regular on this blog as I would like to for thelast few months. But now I would like to share with you all that we have managed to accomplish during this period. It was an exciting journey where social responsibility and public service gained precedence over everything else.

We were a part of a unique fund raising drive for the St Mar Thoma School in Kurar. This unique school provides education over over 1000 children from one of the poorest slum pockets of Kurar in Mumbai. Most of these children are first generation learners. We were successful in generating funds for improving the infrastructure through unique initiatives like releasing agospel album. All sales proceeds from this album went towards making lives of these children a little brighter. The children too showed tremendous enthusiasm and we are proud to announce that all our students cleared their SSC exams!

Over 600 students from yet another one of our other schools, the Mumbai Public School - Juhu Gandhigram, has also been performing consistently well too. This is a BMC school where we hope to empower students from the lower socio-economic strata by making available all benefits that they are entitled to under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan. The SSA is a central government initiative to ensure primary education for all. SSA incorporates mechanisms for local monitoring via school monitoring committees comprising prominent citizens from the neighbourhood connected to various aspects of learning and education for municipal and government aided schools. The last few weeks were fun as the students celebrated Christmas, followed by our Annual Sports Day.

As judicial reforms require our increased participation, I have also been working on the Chalo Azad Maidan initiative... a march to raise awareness about the current government's apathy towards judicial reforms.

Watch this space for more.

Warm regards,
Sherley