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Updates of all activities of Saheli Trust, Dehra Dun, India

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Dear Everyone,

Greetings from Saheli Trust. Inspite of the winter chill and rain, everyone in Saheli has been active and on their toes in the month of January.

Read on to know more....

Community Meetings

Reaching out and interacting with the local community if one of the most aspects of our work. Instead of holding large gatherings, which tend to intimidate many women, we prefer small gatherings of women in their own homes. This enables us to have an honest and a two way dialogue with women. It is especially important since these women are from a rural background, used to keeping shut and not venting out their feelings since childhood. Most of the meetings in winters are on rooftops, as you can see in the pictures, soaking the winter sun.

The pictures in the first row are of Mehuwala Mafi village and the second set is from an urban slum area near Patel Nagar, Dehradun.

Last year we held 23 such meetings attended by 326 women.

Reaching out to people in villages or slums is not for the faint hearted. As you can see from these pictures of our Outreach team making their way to an urban slum

Working in the narrow lanes, trying to gain the confidence of women and preventing yourself from splashing into a dirty pond are in no way easy. That is why our Outreach Team, led by Ms Kanti Rawat, deserve all the applause as they can get. You can see Ms Kanti in the upper right picture.

Saheli Women's Helpline

Resolving family dispute and cases of domestic violence is also not easy, especially if it is set in a rural, patriarchal and conservative background where women are not allowed to speak. It often take time for the men involved to accept our women outreach workers seriously.
Our Women's Helpline number is well publicized and well used by the women in our work area.
The pictures above and below show our team involved in soothing a family dispute recently.

Education@YourDoorSteps

As you know, E@YD or Education@YourDoorStep, is a unique program of Saheli Trust, wherein women and girls, who have been deprived of education, are given a 2-5 month course in Spoken English and Basic Computers in their own villages. Last year we taught 465 girls in 13 different villages.

For this we have 2 English, 1 Hindi & 2 Computer teachers, who do a marvelous job. One needs to visit such classes to get a feel of them. Sharing below few pictures of the classes last month.

Community meetings were held in Noor Basti (Left above) & in Mehuwala Mafi village (Right above ) on the outskirts of Dehradun. Out Outreach program has a reach of almost 70 villages and over 5000 houses in 2018, which is the highest number we have surveyed so far.

Our efforts at educating the rural girl child continued with 6 classes every day across different villages/ urban slums.
The pictures below are from different villages around Dehradun, where classes are in progress.

Hello !

Dear Everyone,

I hope you and your family are all well. Our prayers are always with you.

Recently me and Mrs Manju Kaushik, our President, called upon the newly elected Mayor of DehraDun, Mr Sunil Unniyal and apprised him of our work. The picture above is that of our meeting with him.

All of us in Saheli have been extremely busy over the last month, hence the delay in this month's Newsletter, for which I'm sure you'll forgive me.

SheCab, our women's only Cab service, has been doing fairly well, breaking even financially during the 5th month of it's service, which I think is pretty quick. The Children in our Shelter home are doing well, all into studies with term end exams approaching.

As always, my request to you, please do visit us at any time of your convenience. We would love to hear from you, simply reply to this email. Suggestions help us improve.

Regards,

Shruti Kaushik,
Secretary,
Saheli Trust

If you missed the back issues of our newsletter, please follow this link to see our past issues:

http://www.sahelitrust.com/newsletters.asp