Support our School Community Workers in helping our students' families stay safe

One of our flagship programmes is running three exemplar primary schools in South Delhi - catering to 1200 children of Delhi's poorest families - migrants and daily wage workers living in urban slums.

Urban slums are a hotspot for community spreading of infections, and even in a normal time, our students lose many days of learning time to infectious diseases.

Our Exemplar schools serve children from the poorest of the poor families with many of the parents finding themselves out of jobs, facing financial uncertainty and precarious futures. The psychological impact of these circumstances and the uncertainties place our students in deep risk.

In these treacherous times, our children are back in their small homes in the community. At Peepul, we deeply care about ensuring the safety of our students and their families. The school has been their safe space, for students and parents alike. Many of them live in 8x10 ft houses that they share with 5 other members of their family while many don’t have access to a smartphone (~50% of the families we work with don’t have access to a data plan as they have to choose between money for food or for a data plan).

So today, our teachers and community workers are working overtime to lead the community forward and keep them safe in this time of crisis.

We are reaching out to needy families that don’t have enough money to buy rations. We must ensure that food is on the table for our children, and the pandemic doesn’t end up eroding their learning gains. To this, we have initiated a community support program. The program essentially has four parts:

• Direct Benefit Transfers into the Bank accounts of the neediest
• Delivery of groceries and other food items.
• Data recharges for the students' tablets / mobile phones to continue learning
• Sharing critical information on COVID- Govt. related schemes, safety measures, food distribution centers, etc. We're giving them the right Information via calls from our community workers, supporting them virtually through decisions they have to take, and ensuring the socio-emotional well-being of the children.
• We're doing our best to keep in touch with our kids virtually, and give them the sense of safety and calm of their school in these times.

Support our efforts today, and help us support 1000+ poorest of the poor families!