Community Partners

Sangam has many community partners that it works with both for the CVP program (that I am doing) and for event participants to help out in the community. We have visited many of these partners such as the Aditya Learning Centre out in the Indian countryside, which is a school for village girls to encourage them to continue education with small class sizes. A lot of the village schools only teach until year 4 or 7 after which they have to travel further to another school at which point many of the parents pull their girls out of school so that they can work at home and in the fields. It is considered that girls will marry and look after the house and family so do not need an education so don't need to go to school, however this is slowly changing. The girls here are between standards 8-12. A lot of the girls mothers didn't go to school at all and if they made it to standard 4 or 7 they were very proud of them. The countryside around here was beautiful, rice fields, mountains, open countryside, the girls took us on a two hour walk to their village it was a wonderful experience.









Another of the community partners that we have visited is Maher (http://www.maherashram.org/) which is a home for woman and children to be safe and have food and a home. It was a wonderful organisation, they gave us a beautiful welcome ceremony, with a song 'happy welcome to you, happy welcome to you, happy welcome dear friends, happy welcome to you' and many other songs some of which the children ran up to us and hugged us. At the end they all wanted to know our names. They were very cute children. The organisation is set up so there are about 25 children in one home with two mother figures, one of whom will cook and another will look after the children. We were told some of the children's and woman's stories, some are picked up from the streets and can't remember where they have come from or have lost parents or their parents are too ill to look after them. One of the woman jumped off a bridge into a river with her two children to try and kill herself but failed, someone saw her and told her about Maher, but she wouldn't go, she eventually was persuaded to go and is now happily settled back into life and her children are happy. The children that do still have families go and visit them occasionally to keep contact with their family. This is open to woman, girls and boys of all religions and every religious festival is celebrated equally.





Another organisation we visited was the Muslim Girls' Orphanage, which houses about 170 girls and feeds them. They live in dormitories together and go to the adjoining school and college. It was a big set up with children from the local community also attending the school and college. The girls were very proud to show us their rooms and again they go home for a couple of weeks a year to either a parent or guardian to see life outside and keep contact with their families.

There are so many amazing organisations here to help the people but there are still so many people who need help.