Category: Uttar Pradesh

  • It’s not just a toilet … but dignity for rural Uttar Pradesh

    It was a 4-hour journey from Delhi to Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh (UP). I would not say it was long, because it never seemed so, thanks to the sugarcane fields, kids and even a few horses that kept me busy during the journey. Being a south Indian myself, I was not acquainted with fluent Hindi, leave…

  • How it began at Abhinav

    Despite emotional, social and bureaucratic roadblocks, founder of the NGO Abhinav, Mr. Harendra Singh’s mission to help the community never faded. Here is his story. Harendra Singh always had a passion for reading and writing, which lead to his main profession – journalism. He was curious about current affairs and the issues faced by the…

  • This senior secondary school helped prevent dropouts in Kaintain (UP)

    Towards the last stretch of our 1.5 hr drive from Lucknow to Kaintain, Sitapur District, where Milaan’s “Swarachna Learning and Resource Centre” is located, Sharat pointed towards the fields we were passing and said, “These are all mango farms, where many parents of our school’s children work.” He went on to tell me that when…

  • How it began at Milaan Be The Change

    In 2006, Dhirendra Pratap Singh completed his Bachelors in Mathematics (Hons) from the University of Delhi, fairly certain that taking up a public job would be the next chapter in his life. Little did he realise at the time that the India Fellow programme, for which he had gotten selected (in 2007), would change the…

  • Bringing Kiran (Light) to the lives of the Disabled

    The holy city, Varanasi, attracts people from across the world – some come to scatter ashes of their departed family members into the holy Ganga, others to cleanse their souls by taking a dip in the holy waters themselves, yet others come to pay their respects to Lord Shiva at the famous Kashi Vishwanath Mandir. …

  • How it began at Kiran Society

    India’s poverty hits many people, especially those who come to the country for the first time. It was no different for Ms. Sangeetha J.K., when she came to India (to Bangalore) as a nun with the Little Sister of Jesus. This was back in 1972. She had come to the garden city of Bangalore from…

  • This is what it takes to pull rural India out of poverty

    A recharge bore, a grain bank and a solar-lantern charging station is what made me drive for over 8 hours, over 2 days, through Uttar Pradesh’s terrible, terrible roads. All of the above are deliverables of projects undertaken by the Kanpur-based Shramik Bharti; targeted at bettering the lives of the people in the villages that…

  • How it began at Shramik Bharti

    A 25+ year old organisation is bound to have a rich history and in Shramik Bharti’s case, this has been pieced together after my chat with 2 of its 7 founders – Ganesh Pandey and Usha Varkey. The other founders are X. As I learnt, it was their association with trade unions and working for…

  • How it began at Maitri, India

    While Maitri was officially registered in 2005, it all started in the year X. At that time, Col. Bhopinder Singh was working with the army, and was posted in Shillong, Assam. It was during his tenure here that his wife, Mrs. Winnie Singh came to learn that HIV/AIDS was quite prevalent among the civil population.As…

  • Maitri – a true friend to widowed women

    Last year, Maitri found a 95-year-old widow Kanchan Das living and begging on the streets of Radhakund, a small village a few kilometres outside of Vrindavan. The organization took her under their care and she sleeps on her own bed with a roof over her head today. Petite, with absolutely no ounce of fat on…