For one and half month, I worked as an intern at Saath in the Research, Documentation and Communication (RDC) Cell. I am glad to say that every moment spent at Saath had been a lifetime experience for me!

When I was searching for NGOs on internet, I came across many which worked for children, women or disabled in Ahmedabad. But I was searching for an NGO that worked at a larger scale and focused not only at a particular sector of the society but on the familiy and society as a whole. And then I came across Saath! When I visited their profile, I was astonished to see the phenomenal work done by Saath. It was mind boggling to see a grass root level NGO like Saath working in multiple sectors and striving to make society a better place to live in.

I was amazed to see the structure and working of Saath. Their USP is that they not only focus on women or children but on families and society as a whole. The organization is doing great job in terms of upliftment of the poor, underprivileged people in urban and rural areas. According to me, the best part about Saath is that they have a 360 degree approach towards improving the lives of the poor. They offer multiple services like provision of affordable housing, education, employability, awareness about child rights, training centers for employment, Urban Resource centers etc. You name it and they have it!

This internship gave me a golden opportunity to showcase my talent, learn new skills and improve upon the existing skills. It gave me a chance to lend my helping hand towards the society and contribute towards improving its future.

The best part of my internship was when I went to different villages for the case studies and also when I voluntarily spent time with the children in Balghars. I can never forget the smile on their innocent faces when I distributed stationery and food packets among them.

Shalini conducting a case-study (see last monday's post)

This internship not only helped me learn new things at the RDC Cell but also taught me important aspects of life. It gave me hands on practical experience about the society and its shortcomings. Personally I relished my internship throughout at Saath and enjoyed every part of my work, be it official documentation work or on field work. It gave me a great sense of satisfaction that Saath gave me a platform wherein I was able to contribute my bit towards the society I live in. It was a brilliant experience for me.

I extend my sincere thanks to each and everyone I worked with at Saath. Working with you all at Saath was an incredibly splendid experience!

Devuben was born in a traditional family and brought up in a small village called Sapar, near Rajkot. At the age of 21 in 1985 she got married to her husband.
Life after marriage was a bit difficult because in Sapar they faced lot of draught and therefore the farming land was not doing well. Very shortly the business went under because his customers where not paying for the jobs he was doing and was left with a debt.
In 1990 Devuben and her husband decided to move to Ahmedabad in order to clear the debt and for a better life so decided to move to Pravinnager Guptanar, a slum area in Vasna.

Devuben’s first job was making khakras (a Gujarati snack). She stayed in this job for 2 to 3 year. Her monthly salary was low and to make ends meet she even sold her gold to pay off the original debt. Even then they were left with debt because of the interest, which incurred. She took up extra work in order to clear the debt, and joined a sewing class. To pay the fees she did small jobs around the school. As soon as she learnt to sew, she started to receive small jobs from the colony that helped her cover the cost of her household expenses.

She came in contact with Saath when she was pregnant with her first child. Saath was providing nutritional goods for the expectant mother to help nourish the unborn child.
In 1992 Devuben joined Saath as a teacher on the Balghars Programme. This is a programme, which offers young children up to the age of six in the slum areas basic education, health, and nutritional services. When Devuben joined the programme, she lacked enormous confidence; frightened of people around her because she did not feel as if she fitted in well and thought that she cannot speak on their level. However, her desire was to be able to offer a better future for her family one day. Devuben, her husband and her six-month-old daughter lived in rented accommodation in Vasna.
In the beginning it was very difficult to convince the local residents, however she managed to recruit 32 children in the class. Here she worked for almost four years, from which she received good feedback from the local community and people from the area started to see the benefit the education system was having on the young children. The children started receiving educational support and from this, they learnt discipline, cleanliness, numeric, and alphabets.

Rajendra Joshi, founder of Saath saw the impact that Devuben was making on the local community and suggested she got herself involved in the slum Networking Project for Guptanagar where she would gather local the community and talk to them about the upcoming facility they can have i.e. access to clean water, drainage facility, legal electricity etc. In this role, Devuben received a lot of verbal abuse from the local residents where they started to talk about her, and call her all sorts of names, this then resulted in arguments between her and her husband. These arguments went on for a while until he realized what a good job she did for the community.

After all the hard work of daily pursuing the community, Devuben managed to get some people on board and small payments was taken which was in the Seva Trust. Several months went by and no work had been started so people started to put pressure of Devuben and once again rumours started, this time, they were saying that she has taken our money and no work will be done in this area. The information was relayed back to Rajendra Joshi who then put pressure on AMC for the work to start. Soon after, the preparation started and the local community started seeing people from the local government attending the area to measure up and take relevant structural information.

Local women started approaching Devuben for work and useful knowledge, i.e. learn to read and write Guajarati, sewing, computer classes etc. Many women in her area did not leave their homes but having seen what Devuben has achieved, encouraged other women to follow her example. Devuben started a women’s organisation whereby they would come and talk about issues the women are facing. This was being operated with only 13 women from different communities and religion and now they have around 165 women. There were issues ranging from husbands who were addicted to alcohol and gambling to obtaining ration cards and registering birth etc. They would go back to their colony and talk about the support they are receiving to other woman and that is how the awareness was raised.

Devuben does not feel as if she is working, to her, this is her family and life; it is what she enjoys the most. She finds it rewarding and therefore will go out of her comfort zone to support people around her. Devuben’s vision is to be able to offer many slum areas in Ahmedabad the support she has been able to offer over the last 18-years. Increase people’s awareness and responsibility on handling money. She would like to obtain information about the ownership of Guptannagar’s land so residents can purchase where their homes are currently standing. This would help the residents in Vasna to upgrade their homes and have a better long-term future for their families.

Nutan Patel wrote up this story.

To distribute the collected goods, they approached our organization. On their request we organized a meeting at Vasna’s URC. Devuben, the co-ordinator of the URC, made sure that the collected clothes  found their way to the people who needed them most. Since she works and lives in this area for years, she knew exactly which family was in need of what. Through her and her colleague’s efforts every single item found a useful second life.

Along with Devuben, the QX team distributed clothes in the community to the identified families. They were thrilled by the fact that each and every piece was measured precisely, to make sure it would find its perfect match. The interaction with the community and the knowledge that the collected clothes found suitable users, made this a successful event for QX, our organization and the community.

Are you inspired by this story and do you wish to organize a similar event? Please don’t hesitate to contact us and drop us a few lines with your idea at rdc@saath.org.

Name of the client: Sabir Hussain
Age: 38
Area: Juhapura

Sabir Hussain and his wife Firoza Hussain with 3 children have been residing in Juhapura, Ahmedabad for the last 3 years. Both husband and wife stitch clothes in order to earn their living. A few years back, before they started using the loan service provided by the Saath cooperative, they earned an income of Rs. 8,000 – Rs. 12,000, which wasn’t enough to pay their employees, feed their children and satisfy their daily household needs. During financial crises they used to borrow money from their businessman for a fixed period of time, and returned him that money within the given time. This was very tedious for them, as it was very difficult to collect such a large amount of money within a small period of time.

Two years ago, one of their 12 employees told them about the loans provided by the Saath co-operative. They were surprised to know that a facility like that was available and they further enquired about it. They formed a group of 4 and started taking loans from the Cooperative.. His wife is the leader of the group. She collects instalments, interest, stamp duty and Rs. 100 compulsory savings from all the members of her group and gives it to the field officer on a particular fixed date. She said that she never had problems repaying the loans with interest and she hadn’t experienced any problems in her group about repaying the loans.

She twice took loans from the Cooperative and is very happy with this service. She took a loan of Rs. 5,000 in the 1st cycle and Rs. 10,000 in the 2nd cycle for the purpose of buying a new sewing machine with better technology and sold the old machine. With the use of 2 new machines, they can stitch larger number of clothes in a short period of time and hence, now they earn Rs. 20, 000 – Rs. 25, 000 per month. She says: “I am extremely benefitted by this loan service, provided by Saath Cooperative. It helped me to expand my business by buying two new sewing machines and this has improved my financial status by increasing my profits.”

Due to increase in their income, they now can save Rs. 300 to Rs. 500 a month, apart from the Rs. 100 compulsory savings.

This case-study was conducted by Shalini Pal.

You can find our newsletter by clicking here: Newsletter December 2011.

Wishing you all the best for the year 2012,

The Saath Family

First we went to a school (non-formal education) in a slum area in Vasna. This school is a place where child-labourers get a chance to get prepared for regular education. Our friend, who’s a researcher at Saath’s RDC, had the idea to make origami flowers….an Indian Lotus and a Dutch Tulip flower! After some practice we were ready to learn the kids how to make it! When we arrived all the kids sat nicely together listening to what the teacher was telling. When we showed them the origami paper everybody got excited. Demian turned out to be the best Tulip origami person. All the boys gathered around him. All the girls went to Simea and Jennecke to make lotusflowers. All the kids did a great job, some already knew how to fold flowers! The boys knew how to make airplanes…so many airplanes flew through the classroom

It was great fun, and we laughed a lot! At the end everybody received a nice sticker. We left some more so when somebody has a good result he or she receives a sticker! Saath really created the opportunity for these kids to go to school and it was fantastic to be a little part of that!

We continued our journey to the URC office of Saath in Vasna where we met the coordinator and three field-officers.They explained us about the projects and showed us drawings of a new project for affordable housing.

It was a great experience an we truly believe that Saath really makes a difference for a lot of people!

Thanks a lot for your hospitality!

Warm regards,

Demian and Jennecke

The students were primarily oriented about the whole program by Belaben Joshi who heads the Urmilla Program. The students also learnt everything about our partner organisation, ‘Empower Pragati’, and the work done by them. There they also had an interactive session with the home managers. They were very pleased to know our policy and the way we deal with this program.

They also interacted with the Relationship Manager who is a mediator between the client and the home mangers and takes care of the home mangers’ rights as well as clients’ satisfaction.

They also visited our clients’ homes and had a Q & A session with the client as well as the home manager who works there. This helped them understand the program better and they got an idea about how successful this program is in terms of client satisfaction, home manger satisfaction and in terms of profit as well.

Later they were further de-briefed by the Executive Director of Saath, Keren Nazareth about the program. Overall, we both had an enlightening experience.

We wholeheartedly thank the IIM students for visiting us and spending their valuable time with us.

If you would like to make a similar visit to our organisation or if you have other ideas to support one of our programmes, you are most welcome! To do so, please contact the RDC unit at rdc@saath.org or give us a call (079 26929827)

We are very thankful to ‘Journeys for Change’ and ‘Mahindra United World School ‘for visiting us and interacting with us.

If you would like to make a similar visit to our organisation or if you have other ideas to support one of our programmes, you are most welcome! To do so, please contact the RDC unit at rdc@saath.org or give us a call (079 26929827)

Last Tuesday a group of Tulip Telecom visited the CFS in Behrampura to distribute some of the collected goods to the children. The rest will be distributed among the remaining 7 CFS centres in the Ahmedabad Area.

On behalf of the children of the CFS we’d like to give a big thank you to the people from Tulip Telecom Ahmedabad!

If you would like to organize a similar event or if you have other ideas to support one of our programmes, please contact the RDC unit at rdc@saath.orgor give us a call (079 26929827)
Financial donations are also welcome ofcourse! Visit our pledgepage at GiveIndia. Until the 20th of October, we will receive a matching grant for your donation!

NDTV in action: Interviewing a student at Moti Kishol Primary School

Support My School is a campaign initiated by NDTV and Coca Cola India and is supported by Charities Aid Foundation India (CAF). The campaign supports schools to improve the infrastructure at their sites. The main components are:
• improve water facilities
• improve sanitation facilities
• provide rain water harvesting
• improve facilities for sports
• facilitate landscaping

Saath’s role concerned the identification of schools and implementation of the programme. To ensure its sustainability, a follow up will be conducted after 6 months of implementation. In April this year Saath started the implementation of the Support My School campaign in 4 urban schools and 5 rural schools in Ahmedabad district.

Playground at Asalgam Primary School facilitated by the SMS campaign

On September 18 there will be a NDTV team stand by for live coverage at Goblej Primary School in Ahmedabad. You’re invited to come to the event or tune in on NDTV.

For more info visit the Support my School page at the NDTV website.

Supportive regards,
Chetasi & Simea – The RDC team