Deepalaya

In order to provide skills that can help underprivileged youth become self-sufficient and find jobs, Deepalaya runs several vocational training programmes in its centres. These programmes include vocational training in IT, Beauty, Tailoring, Web Designing, and computer software.

The Deepalaya Institutional Centre provides shelter, food, clothing, and care to street and run-away children, victims of child abuse, children of lifetime convicts, children of HIV/AIDS positive parents, children of sex workers and other vulnerable children.

The institution currently has 19 girls and 46 boys residing in separate hostels. It also offers regular healthcare, counselling sessions, healthy-living classes such as yoga and meditation, a playground, education, vocational training and special needs programmes helping with anger management issues and personality disorders.

Deepalaya's Community Health programme focuses on spreading awareness of preventive health practices among rural communities and works on providing healthcare to the poor through its many projects. The Chameli Dewan Memorial Rural Health & Mobile Clinic in Gusbethi is a clinic established in a van that visits numerous villages, providing health check-ups and primary health treatment.

In order to empower women, Deepalaya has helped form self-help groups for the underprivileged, where each participant contributes a fixed amount. These self-help groups have boosted women's confidence, encouraging them to operate bank accounts, read, write, and start micro-enterprises. Because of this initiative, women have become more independent, the literacy rate of girl children has increased, women have begun to fight alcoholism and there is increased respect towards women in communities.

In addition, there is a decrease in incidents of child marriage, female foeticide, and domestic violence. Deepalaya also partnered with Amway India to initiate the "Sanitary Napkin Project" which helps women become entrepreneurs and manufacture economical sanitary pads, empowering women and making sanitary napkins more affordable to the poor. It has helped them set up machines, understand the manufacturing process, and also market the napkins.

In order to complement the education that children receive in Government schools, Deepalaya has established numerous learning centres. In addition, it has set up two formal schools. In both the schools and learning centres, Deepalaya aims to help the children develop holistically, focusing not only on academics but also on various talents such as dance, music, sports and art.

Further, Deepalaya has adopted a 'Positive Discrimination to the Girl Child’ policy. Thus, it actively identifies girls who are not in school and encourages them and their families to enrol them in school. It offers incentives in the education fees and provides admission to the boys of the family only if the parents enrol the girl child.

Additionally, Deepalaya began an initiative called the Father and Daughter Alliance, which aims to involve fathers in their daughters' education and encourage them to be actively involved in their daughters' daily work, homework and class assignments.

‘Sambhav Project – Mainstreaming the Differently abled’ is an initiative for children with various disabilities like Intellectual Disability, Cerebral Palsy, Down syndrome, Autism, Hearing and Speech Impairment, Muscular Dystrophy and other physical impairments.

The programme works to make them self-reliant and helps them enter mainstream society. Deepalaya helps children learn how to perform daily activities such as sitting, standing, wearing clothes, etc, in addition to basic education such as reading, writing, comprehending communication, and responding.

Children are provided with speech therapy and involved in extra-curricular classes like sports, games, dance, music, crafts, and art, The programme has a team of Special Educators, Physiotherapists, Speech Therapists, and Occupational therapists to assess each child at the time of enrollment and develop Individualized Education Plans (IEP) for each child. Each child is then guided individually, based on this customized goal.

Deepalaya has identified the need for making an intervention through facilitating cataract surgeries especially for those in the age group of 50+ who do not have access to such facilities. The technical support will be provided by R P Eye Centre, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) for establishing vision centers at (1) Deepalaya Gram, Village Gusbethi, Sahsola revenue village, Mewat Distt. and (2) Sohna, Gurgaon, Haryana. Deepalaya has a collaboration with AIIMS for its Eye Care Center's in Delhi.

"Children with special needs are overlooked in the sphere of education and policy planning in terms of accessibility and support systems, and even more so when they hail from disadvantaged circumstances. We strongly believe that differently abled children can lead a normal life if they have effective access to services like care and development, education, vocational training, employment opportunities, and the availability of aids and appliances. Sambhav works with children from urban slum communities in Delhi and caters to beneficiaries from 27 adjoining slum communities."