Readers who want to volunteer with or donate to the NGOs listed on these pages can get in touch with Charities Aid Foundation (CAF). Please fill up the form at the end of the list. All NGOs have been validated by CAF. So go ahead and choose your cause.
- Salaam Baalak Trust
Location: Central Delhi
Focus: Support and shelter to street and working children.
Celebrating the spirit of survival among children, the name of the organisation itself sets out its mission: Salaam Baalak means ‘Salute the Children'. Inspired by the lives of street children who played an important part in her internationally acclaimed film, Salaam Bombay, filmmaker Mira Nair established the Salaam Baalak Trust (SBT) in 1988. Dedicated to the care and protection of neglected street children, regardless of caste, colour, creed or religion, SBT provides for the development of street children through an enabling environment. In doing so, it helps the children regain their self-confidence and return to mainstream society and eventually contribute to its development.
Functioning throughout Central Delhi, Salaam Baalak Trust has a range of activities and programmes:
Shelter homes: Shelter homes set up by SBT such as AASRA, Apna Ghar, Arushi and a Drop-in Shelter provide a convivial and supportive home-like environment for the street children.
Childline: This is India's first 24-hour free phone outreach service for children in need of emergency assistance. SBT is in charge of the Central zone of Delhi for this service.
SBT encourages its inmates to engage and participate in the performance of theatre, street plays and puppetry to help them express their emotions and to enable communication and foster teambuilding. SBT also makes available to its inmates various kinds of vocational training as well as income generation and saving schemes to make them economically self-reliant.
Funding is needed for:
ARUSHI which is specially designed to address the needs of the girl child.
Rs 28,500 per child per annum will support boarding, lodging, school uniforms, clothing, healthcare, transportation,school fee, educational material and entertainment.
2. Parikrama
Location: Bangalore
Focus: Parikrama Humanity Foundation is a non-profit with a mission to unleash the potential of under served children in urban India. It provides them with equal opportunities and makes the children valuable contributing members of our society.
At Parikrama, the goal is very clear: the non-profit ensures that every child completes school and undertakes education and training to earn a living- be it special vocational training or higher college education. Parikrama works primarily in the field of education, providing education through centres of learning. Parikrama runs four centres of learning in Bangalore and serves over 725 children.
Funding needed for:
Sponsor a child/class: Parikrama Humanity Foundation runs four schools for street and slum children. We have about 730 children coming to our schools. To ensure that our children come to school regularly Parikrama provides them breakfast, lunch and a glass of protein mix in the evening. It also provides total healthcare and many interventions with the family like de addiction camps, micro funding and vocations skills training for family members. We have had 98 per cent attendance, less than 1 per cent drop out and 100 per cent attendance at parent-teacher meetings.
Sponsor one or more class of 30 children each: The cost of each child per annum is Rs 15,000 which includes education, nutrition, healthcare and community development. It requires Rs 4.5 lakhs to sponsor one class.
Bus for the school: Parikrama's four centres are located in four widely spread areas of Bangalore. To ensure that the children come regularly to school it needs to have them picked up from their homes and dropped back after school hours. Having its own school bus will help it to provide this service to the children thus ensuring that attendance is even greater.
We also need to transport our children across our four centres and to the suburbs of Bangalore to link our children to the outside world and provide them the opportunity for greater exposure and experience through field trips. Approximate cost: Rs 8 lakhs
1.Ananya Trust
Location: Bangalore
Focus: Children and non-formal education
Ananya, established in 1998, is a charitable trust started due to the dearth of schools that provide relevant and meaningful education for underprivileged children in and around Bangalore city. Through Ananya Shikshana Kendra (ASK) , it caters to the needs of children who are not admitted to other schools either due to social, physical or academic reasons. Comprising of learning centres, the children are within reach of study material arranged according to learning difficulties they might face. Currently we have 51 children on the rolls, five teaching staff and seven non-teaching staff.
Funding is needed for:
Ananya requires computer peripherals, consumables, software and a computer teacher. Ananya is starting a programme to introduce computer literacy as part of their curriculum. This will enable the children to become familiar with the world of computers, be eligible for further training in computers and join the IT-enabled profession. It will open up other career options for these children who will otherwise have no choice but to follow their parents' profession.
Volunteering Opportunities:
Mentoring students especially adolescents: If volunteers are Bangalore based they can spend weekends with the children mentoring them and acting as friends and guides. This will help to build a long-term association with the children, boost their self-confidence and instill a sense of belonging in them.
Training children in the use of computers: Employee volunteers can visit the school on weekends to teach children the creative use of computers in different areas of learning. Volunteers can enable them go beyond basic computer usage to discover the magical world of computers so that classroom learning becomes more interesting, (eg, using available software including graphics and even creating their own software.)
3. Action for Autism
Focus: Supporting the rights of people with autism and multiple disabilities.
Action for Autism works nationally. It has a range of activities and programmes:
- Diagnosis and assessment of children with autism.
- Education through a specialised school for children with autism called Open Door.
- Recognising the lack of trained professionals to teach children with autism and to cater to the increasing demand for its services, AFA started its own Teacher Training Programme, which has today become a one-year diploma in Special Education DSE-ASD under the Rehabilitation Council of India.
- Family and parent skill-building through counselling, early intervention, home management and mother & child programs as well as parent-support groups.
- Training of parents and professionals through training workshops.
- Resource provision through AFA's resource centre, the AFA journal, Autism Network and website.
- Advocacy and awareness.
Funding needed for:
Sponsoring children : Annual cost per child for the mother-child programme is Rs 5,500. This amount sponsors one child, annually.
Cost of a professional therapist: Rs 5,000.
4• Animal India Trust
Location: Delhi
Focus: Medical care for the street and stray canine population of Delhi.
Animal India Trust was established in March 2002 to help improve the lives of street animals and to promote public awareness of rabies in New Delhi.
Its focus is:
- To neuter and provide rabies and vaccination programs.
- Provide assistance to injured or sick animals found on the streets.
- Free medical treatment to pets of economically disadvantaged people.
- Placement of orphaned street puppies in loving homes.
Funding needed for:
Sterilisation of stray dogs: Rs 800.00 per dog.
Anti-rabies vaccination of stray dogs: Rs 150 per dog.
5• Astha
Focus: Providing services to children/persons with disabilities and their families with special focus on communities.
Astha was started in 1993. The rights of individuals with disabilities have been at the core of Astha's belief and work ethics. Astha's aim is to:
- Maximise awareness about the issue.
- Increase the accessibility of people with disability in society.
- Integrate children with disability into the mainstream.
Funding needed for:
Sponsor a child with special needs.
It costs just Rs 12,000 per annum. This will cover physiotherapy, speech therapy, special educator, art and craft.
Or sponsor an event:
One event costs Rs 5,000. This may be for annual picnic/festival celebrations/Sports Day.
6• Ritinjali
Location: Delhi
Focus: Education and community development.
Ritinjali was started in 1996 with the aim of working in the field of education and community development.
- Their aim is to provide holistic education towards nurturing empowered, responsible citizens who will be capable of providing not only for themselves but also contributing actively to their local communities through enterprise, self awareness and self induced social responsibility.
Funding needed for:
- Education for slum children:
Annual cost per child : Rs.6,300 to support education material, one meal a day, entertainment and healthcare.
- Tihar Jail, New Delhi Ritinjali provides counselling, rehabilitation and legal representation services to juvenile inmates aged 16 to 21. You can volunteer for legal assistance, counseling and advocacy programs .
- Ritinjali's Second Chance School, Mahipalpur, New Delhi.
A school for youth who did not get the first chance.
You can volunteer for youth mentoring, vocational training, placement, employment programs and entrepreneurship programs.
7• Sahara House
Focus: Support for the Chemical and Alcohol Dependent and HIV/AIDS Infected/Affected Individuals.
Sahara means support, and since 1978, Sahara House has been a refuge, spearheading the provision of effective treatment to drug users, alcoholics, the mentally challenged and those infected/affected by HIV/AIDS.
This residential care facility focuses on counselling with sessions covering detoxification, medical attention, physical education, self-development, financial and household management.
Other programme areas include:
- Drug awareness and prevention through its street theatre group.
- Income generation opportunities to its beneficiaries.
- A pre and post-kindergarten school in Sahara House for destitute and deprived children.
Funding needed for:
Drug Rehabilitation Programme:
Cost per client per month: Rs.4, 290 which will take care of drug de-addiction, food supplies, psycho-social support.
HIV/AIDS Treatment Care & Support Programme:
Cost per bed per day: Rs 475 which will take care of food, medicines, referral, diagnostic cost, medical support, supplies, linen etc.
Individual donors can give any amount they wish. The money can be used by the home to buy dry rations, medicines, computers and for a water cooler at the men's rehabilitation centre.
8• Vidyarambam Trust
Location: Chennai
Focus: Education for underprivileged children.
Vidyarambam Trust, established in 2002, is a non-profit organisation with a mission to provide basic literacy to children in the age group 3-5 in the villages of Tamil Nadu.
The main objectives of the organisation are:
- To provide primary education for underprivileged children irrespective of their caste, creed and religion.
- To run educational institutions, acquire and run existing educational institutions through any media and not for the purpose of profit.
- To provide for endowment lectures, fellowships or chairs in any educational institution to encourage, develop and promote study in any field of medical science.
- To establish and assist institutions for the purpose of imparting education of a general or technical nature like arts, science, engineering, medical, sidda, ayurvedic, homeopathy, unani.
Funding needed for:
- Pre- primary education : This programme addresses the basic educational needs of economically underprivileged children in the age group of 3 to 5 years to enable them to get into mainstream schooling with ease. The method of teaching has been evolved by experts in early child hood education adopting playway methods. The children enjoy learning and would never be averse to education thereafter.
- Remedial courses : The students studying from Class 2 to Class 6 do lack basic knowledge of language and skills of simple arithmetic. Such children are identified by conducting a pre-test. Simple ways are employed in a remedial course, the duration of which is four months, to develop the skill of rapid reading and basic arithmetic. Evaluations are made by a post-test and 90 percent of the students reach the desired level.
- Volunteering is very useful in conducting pre-tests and post-tests to guage the skill levels of children enrolled in the remedial course.
- Volunteers are needed to conduct community surveys to find out areas where these programs will be required to be executed.
9• Naandi Foundation
Location: Hyderabad
Focus: Eradication of poverty through public-private convergence.
Naandi Foundation, based in Hyderabad, has been impacting the lives of the marginalised through innovative social alliances and entrepreneurship and promoting thought leadership on development issues by building a critical mass of media, academia, polity, corporates, communities and individuals for solving problems.
Location: Hyderabad
Funding needed for:
- Project Nanhi Kali: Only three out of every 10 girls that enroll in school in India complete Class 10. The rest drop out because their families cannot afford to keep them in school. This is the status of girl children in India. Sometimes it's the cost of a book or a pencil that leads to a girl child dropping out. And a girl out of school is more at risk of being exploited, overworked or married off early. Nanhi Kali is fighting to keep the girl child in school.
To begin a movement that assures every girl children her right to education and a life with dignity, Naandi Foundation together with the K C Mahindra Education Trust is jointly managing a project called Nanhi Kali. This is a special project that provides education and other material support to underprivileged girl children in government schools who are at the risk of dropping out from school.
The Nanhi Kali project supports the education of girl children through sponsorships. Naandi Foundation has already reached out to over 20,000 girls. The transformation process of girl child education has begun and now there is no looking back.
- Education: Assist Naandi's Education Activists who conduct academic support classes and academic performance assessments through monthly tests/evaluations at schools. This brings third party involvement in the assessment process.
- Girl children: Orient girls during special cluster meetings where tips on health and hygiene would be given by volunteers. Requirement here is for women volunteers. The volunteers would be provided training on the topics they would address during the health and hygiene meetings.
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