Education and Health during COVID19

With the global COVID19 pandemic hitting India, our community people have been affected in more than innumerable ways. The government has advised the people to observe social distancing which means most of the crowded areas like markets and other business areas have had to shut operations. Since most of the Waghri and Sikhligars community livelihoods depend on selling clothes and selling utensils or vegetables within these markets, their financial status has taken a severe decline. Schools of children have shut down indefinitely to avoid the spread of infection among the children. As this measure has been implemented just before the exam term of the year, this has put a sudden halt to the children’s education. To follow safety measures, Ashraya has also temporarily suspended classes at the education centre.  The health centre, however, remains open to tackle any suspected cases and distributing medicines. Subsequently, this had put the teachers in a dilemma as to how to make sure there is no gap in learning outcomes till this situation passes. Hence, Ashraya decided that the teachers will come up with a plan to ensure that the children do not get a lag from their studies. Ashraya’s nutrition program aims towards providing 3 healthy meals to children every day to substitute their nutrition needs. Since the conception of the program, we have aimed to raise the BMI and haemoglobin levels of children most of them who are malnourished. 

In the past nine months, the Ashraya team had put a lot of effort on how we can work with the children remotely and how we can ensure there is no loss of learning. Ashraya teachers have been conducting online video classes for older students of 8th, 9th and 10th standards.  The teachers have segregated the children into groups for English and Maths classes and each teacher has been giving worksheets with three to four hour’s worth of work for the children to be constructively engaged. The teachers are utilising platforms like Youtube, Google Classrooms for video sessions on other subjects, and giving them assignments/worksheets every day. One of our major challenges was the lack of access to phones/tablets/computers in households due to which many students were experiencing an academic lag. To tackle this, Ashraya conducted a donation campaign for old or unused phones/tablets which catered for devices for 5 families. All of Ashraya's students now have access to remote classes and e-learning and our academic year have officially commenced. A survey of the communities was done in the first week of March to find out which families require nutrition support. Based on that Ashraya distributed food ration to 209 families in the third week of March, for a month in order to support them in these challenging times. We supplied them with one month of Wheat Flour, Rice, Dal, Sugar, Oil, Tea and Biscuits. The Ashraya team additionally worked with local Police and health workers and took the necessary precautions and permissions to support the aforementioned activities. From identifying vendors, procurement of ration, transport, packaging, to finally distributing to all families while following the norms of social distancing, all the activities were undertaken with care and precaution. Ashraya has been supplying food ration and health and hygiene kits including sanitary napkins to our community families since March. We will continue to do so till this situation persists and need our partners to support for the same. Ashraya has completed 11 food ration distributions within the community and aims to supply food grains to the communities till they are financially stable. In the next few months, Ashraya will be consistently working on increasing the attendance of children from 75% to at least 80% in the online sessions and assignment completion. We will be working with the parents constantly for creating awareness on remote education and keeping their children safe and healthy at home. Ashraya will constantly followup with the door-to-door survey of community members’ health status and availability of doctors to them. However, we need to make sure all our staff is motivated and safe at the same time.

Ashraya aims to create the first generation of learners in their communities and ensure that they are financially stable. The Ashraya team has been ensuring that the Waghri and Sikhligar children have access to education, nutrition, health and documentation for the last 15 years. Due to COVID19, we have had to modify our programmes so as to cater to the communities needs of education, health and nutrition. We aim to ensure that children do not experience an academic lag and have access to all resources to study and work remotely. Our impact goals are:

• Ensuring each child has access to quality education with a focus on holistic practices and extracurricular education.
• Ensuring that each child has a conducive learning environment and parental support.
• Ensuring that each is happy, healthy and safe by focussing on eradicating malnourishment, diseases and focussing on mental health awareness.
• Ensuring that the community is healthy and safe and economically self-sustainable.