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

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Dear Everyone,

Wish you all a very happy New Year 2018!

While new year has always been a time when people worldwide are busy making new resolutions and planning for the whole year.
Lets have a look at how the last month of 2017 has been for us.

The sad story of Mobina and Geeta...

We got an early morning rescue call on a Sunday morning to rescue a woman with her 3 children who was forced by her in laws to leave the house after the death of her husband. The in laws tortured her and her children emotionally as well as physically for continuous three days. When she was no longer able to bear it, she decided to run away to a neighbor's house for shelter. We went there and took the help of the police to get her inside the house and threatened the in laws for not hitting her again and if they ever do it again they'll end up in jail.
Most of the rural women in India are not self reliant due to lack of education so they have to be dependent on someone to look after them. The next step will be to educate her girls and give them dreams. The eldest girl is in class 8th and we'll keep a close eye on the family so that they don't stop her education and get her married.

In the second picture below on the right hand side is 38 year old Geeta, who was found by our Outreach team while on a survey at Pithuwala Village, on the outskirts of Dehradun. The lady had run away from her husband's home after being beaten up three months ago and now the husband was refusing to let her come back. We took the lady and her two children back to her husband's house and counselled both of them.
While the husband was a decent fellow, he had a bad temper and prone to bouts of anger and violence. After hours of counselling, the two finally agreed to live together while the husband promised to control his anger and violence.

We will be keeping a close eye on them.

Our Education@YourDoorstep Campaign

A new batch of girls under the E@YD program started this month with 32 girls, in Hajjan Basti in Mehuwala. This was our 14th Batch.

The will and determination of these women and girls keeps us motivated throughout the year.
All they need is a chance to grow and succeed in life.

Outreach Program

This time we held two meetings on Outreach meeting at Harijan Colony, Buttovala village on the outskirts of Dehradun. Well attended with active participation by the women of the colony.
This month we held two outreach meets at Harijan Colony, Buttovala and Pithuwala village on the outskirts of Dehradun on gender discrimination and women's rights. The elder women felt bad about not being educated enough and were now adamant in making their girls self dependent.

We welcome the newest member of Saheli Family, 21 year old Aruna Verma, who has joined Saheli. She is a a blue belt in Karate and will be teaching Self defence and Karate to rural girls.

RANGOLI - Our Self Help Group

Our Self Help Group has women from the village called Sewla Kalan and is also associated with various artisans all across India. With an aim to make rural women self dependent and to give the artisans a platform to showcase their products to promote Indian art and culture.
We focus on traditional Indian fabrics like kalamkari, Ikkat, Phulkari.
At is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced. Shop with us and experience this feeling yourself.

Message from the Secretary

Dear Everyone,

Another year has passed and it has been 5 years since we started Saheli. When I see the faces I am surrounded with, I smell the intensity of responsibility we have on us, it is huge! And with each passing day it is increasing. This gives us the motivation to wok more and more and without the love and support of each one of you it was impossible for us to make the "other half" of the society strong and self reliant.

It gives me immense pleasure to share with you the success of our Education@YourDoorstep campaign. In November'2016 with an aim to give general knowledge about English and Computers to the rural girls and putting them back in mainstream schools and colleges E@YD campaign was started. 228 girls have gone through the course so far. Out of these 228 girls, 7 girls who have discontinued their education for last two to three years were again enrolled by us in different schools and colleges and one girl is preparing for administrative services, another girl from the same batch has started working as a computer teacher in a local school. What I have understood while talking to these girls is that if given a single chance to succeed, these girls would have done wonders and achieved so much in their life. It makes me feel sad to see women dependent on others their entire life and considering themselves "week". It is peak time for women and girls of our country to stand and break this illusion and prove everyone wrong.

Also, I would like to request everyone to please spread the word about us. If you feel our work is good, please tell your friends and acquaintances about us. The more people know about us, the more likely are we to get support. So, I would like to request you to please forward this newsletter to such people.

Finally, as I always say, we would love to have your feedback, both negative and positive, because that is what helps us grow. Please do not hesitate to comment, all you need to do is to reply to this email. Your words mean a lot to us, so please don't hesitate.

And the invitation to visit our shelter is there for everyone. Please do spare some time and come and feel the spirit of Saheli.

With regards,

Shruti Kaushik,
Secretary, Saheli

...and in the end...

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

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

Read our Annual Report for the year 2015