Pathshala Hostel for 100 underprivileged children

Srotoshwini Trust aims to encourage underprivileged children to study and makes sure that they get a good environment to live, to dream, to read, to think and to go far in life. After some years with them, we, the teachers realized that only to make them study for few hours was not the ultimate solution as they would go back to their same dark environment of child abuse, child labour and liquor, etc. So we started to think of a much more real and happy picture. We thought of building a hostel for 100 such kids. A well-wisher has donated a piece of land at Lasundra, near Savli. We then approached different companies and well-wishers, collected funds and started our construction project in December 2017 and finished in September 2019. Since then, we have 80 children living in the hostel.

Srotoshwini Trust is based out of Vadodata, Gujarat, India. It was registered in 2010, primarily aimed at encouraging underprivileged children to study and give them a conducive environment to study and be responsible citizens in future.The hostel is located in Lasundra village, Savli, in the outskirts of the city of Vadodara. The children go to Navprerna School which is run by the Navrachana Education Society for their formal studies.

Our goal is not for the children to become literate and pass their Xth and XIIth standard exams. The goal is for the children to remain in the hostel till they are self-reliant and financially independent. For that, we follow 4 principles -

1. Provide Activity based education: Our little children receive an activity based teaching to introduce them to formal education. There are many activities and toys they use to learn. For Primary, Secondary and Higher secondary students we organize many inter house competitions multiple times in a week. Competitions range from painting to public speaking to dance to story telling to sports. They also attend classes for music, dance, arts and crafts, theatre, skill development (since project based learning) etc. The goal is all round development.
2. Provide a Skills based education: For older students, we encourage skills based projects on campus - construction, electric, spoken english, organic farming, handicraft. Skills that will help them establish a career in the future.
3. Provide a Values based education: We provide an environment that encourages honesty, empathy, kindness, taking initiative, putting others needs before our own. We have a rewarding system that recognizes and rewards such behavior.
4. Provide a Family environment: We have 7 hostel mothers who create a family environment for the children. They are there for the children 24x7 and make sure they are well taken care of mentally, physically and emotionally. We also encourage all children to keep in touch with their parents and family weekly through phone calls.

We started our first hostel in 2014 with 8 children. The success of that model is truly evident in the first batch of children who have become leaders in our current hostel of 80 children. The President, Vice President of the student council, leaders of the student houses, leads for individual hands-on projects on campus like construction, stage design, kitchen management, gardening and farming, event organization are being handled independently by them. Not only that, they are also the flag-bearers of our value based education and are successfully training the new children to become self-reliant and responsible while helping others. Our motto is to bring all of them in the main stream and nurture them so that they can independently support themselves and their families by being successful in a career of their choice.