For the past few years, Ranjana has been a student of the Ashraya Initiative for Children’s Education Outreach Program, which offers her educational support in many forms – tutoring, transportation, school supplies, and, perhaps most importantly, daily meals. Prior to joining the AIC Education Outreach Program, Ranjana had suffered from various health problems and had been hospitalized for a few different surgeries. She was chronically underweight, but is much healthier now that she is receiving nutritious daily meals from the AIC Education Centre before and after school.

Your gift of a month of meals each, Gillian (x4), Meredith, Chris (x2), Erik, James and Julie (x2) and Jeffrey (x2), will ensure that Ranjana continues to receive three balanced meals a day for an entire year. The meals include chapati (flat bread), bhaji (cooked vegetables), boiled eggs, fresh seasonal fruit, yogurt and several other items. Ranjana’s parents, credit their daughter’s improved health and steady weight gain to the meals that she has been receiving and will continue to receive at AIC.

Thank you, Gillian, Meredith, Chris, Erik, James and Julie, and Jeffrey, for coming together to ensure that Ranjana continues to enjoy good health.

Also a tradition of her caste, Bhanu was married to her husband and became a mother at a very young age, and has struggled quite a bit to raise her children and feel confident in her parenting abilities. Your donations, Akiko, Tom (x2) and Paris, enabled AIC to enroll Bhanu and her son, Tishan, in parenting classes. This is a weekly class that gives Bhanu the opportunity to meet with mothers of similarly-aged babies or toddlers and participate in interactive discussions and activities related to a variety of topics, such as dietary needs of their children, baby growth and development, birth spacing and family planning, communication and relationships within the family, good parenting practices and much more.

The class also gives AIC’s health workers a chance to be in regular contact with the babies and toddlers in the community to ensure that little ones like Tishan have received their vaccinations on time, are well-nourished and in good health. Bhanu and her son love the class, and have had very good attendance, so they regularly receive small incentive items (soap, baby shampoo, etc) to keep them coming back. Bhanu says that she is learning a lot from the lectures and hands-on activities, and wishes that she had known about the class earlier!

Thank you, Akiko, Tom and Paris, for enabling Bhanu to bring up a strong and healthy baby.

However, all of that changed last year when Anarkaur joined the AIC Basic Tailoring class. For six months, she attended the class six days a week, and was a star pupil by the time she advanced to AIC’s Intermediate Tailoring class, another six month course. This month, Anarkaur completed the Intermediate Tailoring class and moved up to the third and final class, Advanced Tailoring. She is becoming an adept seamstress, and takes custom orders from family and community members to practice. In this final class, Anarkaur is excited to learn everything that she will need to know to open her own tailoring business and work from home.

She has also made an incredible amount of progress in the daily 1-hour literacy component of the class, which she takes very seriously. Now that she is starting to read and write on her own, Anarkaur is confident that she will be able to couple her newfound literacy with her rapidly expanding sewing skills so that her business can really take off.

Thank you, Leslie and Dena (x5) for coming together to ensure that Anarkaur becomes a wonderful seamstress and a successful entrepreneur.

Thank you, Lisa R (x3), Pradeep (x2), and Rajeev for coming together to ensure that Satvankaur will get to attend the entire tailoring course.

Priyanka is a hard working girl, who is enrolled in one of the better schools in Pune. She is a part of the Educational Outreach Program at Ashraya Initiative for Children, and she gets educational support, including school fees, transportation to school and after school coaching.

Thank you, Patricia, Dara (x2), Julian, Harold, Carol, Carys, Matimeo, Dean and Julie, Leslie, Dennis and Don, for coming together to provide an entire year of meals to Priyanka. Since she comes from a household where she is often forced to go hungry for several days at a stretch, the three nutritious meals that she gets because of your generosity is what keeps her going.

Thank you for providing Priyanka the nutrition which helps her concentrate on her studies, thereby excelling in her classes and progressing toward a brighter future!

Your donation enabled AIC to enroll Kavita in the Mother-Baby class, which meets weekly to teach women about the dietary needs of their children, baby growth and development, birth spacing and family planning, communication and relationships within the family, good parenting practices and many other topics through structured discussions led by local professionals, specialists and health workers.

Kavita brings her daughter to the interactive sessions and is able to leave her with a designated caregiver during the mothers-only components of the class, though many of the activities are based on interaction between the mothers and their babies, and Kavita enjoys those sessions. At the end of each class, Kavita receives a small item, such as a bar of soap or bottle of baby lotion, as a reward for good attendance. She looks forward to these small gifts, and also feels like she is learning a lot, especially with regard to nutrition and growth and development, that will benefit Vidhya and her brother.

Thank you, Cindy, Bess, Margo and Erik, for coming together to enable Kavita to attend Mother-Baby classes for an entire year.

Nine year old Sanjay is the second-oldest of five siblings. His parents trade old clothes and cloth and his mother often begs on the streets in the evenings to support the family, earning a combined total of about Rs 2,000 per month ($45). On weekends when he is not in school, Sanjay’s mother sends him out to beg as well, so that the family can eat.

Thanks to your generous donations, Venkat, Justin, Sudha, Thomas, Phillip, Craig, Dwayne and Terese, Howard, George and Dennis, Sanjay now receives breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack at the Ashraya Initiative for Children’s Education Outreach Centre. All of the food served is healthy, fresh and balanced to meet Sanjay’s nutritional needs. He is especially appreciative of the fact that he now can take a packed lunchbox to school and doesn’t have to face the teasing and embarrassment of going without.

Sanjay is a very good student, and thanks to your generosity, he will go far in life!

The freedom to take a few hours each day doing something to further her own future and interests is something that Jividevi has never had before. After having spent the last twenty years as a housewife, Jividevi relishes the opportunity to get out of the house and socialize with other women during her tailoring class. Although she is illiterate, she finds the tailoring teacher’s style of instruction easy to follow and is learning a great deal. Furthermore, she spends an hour per day with the adult literacy teacher, and is excited to be learning basic literacy skills alongside sewing techniques. She hopes that someday, she might be able to pair her newly acquired literacy skills with her tailoring talents to start her own small home-based tailoring business.

Thank you, Alka, Mike and Suzanne and Tom for coming together to enable Jividevi to attend the Basic Tailoring Course, thereby helping her supplement the family income and become economically independent.

14-year-old Reena is one of five siblings who moved with their mother to the urban slums of Pune recently. Prior to that, the family was living in a small village in Gujarat, where the parents and oldest children earned a living breaking larger stones into smaller stones for construction work. In search of a better livelihood, the family shifted to the city one year ago. Reena, who had studied up until 7^th standard in a Gujarati-medium school in the village, has not been going to school since the move, as the majority of the local government schools in Pune are taught in a different language. To fill her time, she helps her mother sell cloth material from door-to-door to earn some money, and recently enrolled in the AIC Basic Tailoring class with her older sister to learn a marketable skill.

Reena and her sister Jaya attend the classes every day, and have made great strides in learning the foundations of basic tailoring. Once the 6-month class comes to a close, they are already making plans to continue on to the Intermediate Tailoring course together. They have also made many new friends in the class, which has helped to ease the transition to a new neighborhood, as they bond over their sewing projects and cups of tea together at the centre. Under the guidance of the women’s literacy teacher who spends an hour with the tailoring class girls and women every day, Reena also feels encouraged to continue her education, and is hoping that she can rejoin school this year.

Thank you, Amiee (x3), Ravi, Rupali and Alka for helping Reena to learn a skill.

There, she and the other mothers spend an hour learning about dietary needs of their children, baby growth and development, birth spacing and family planning, communication and relationships within the family, good parenting practices and many other topics through structured discussions led by local professionals, specialists and health workers. Childcare is provided at the classes, though many of the activities and sessions are interactive between the mothers and their babies, as are nutritious snacks and small “incentive” items such as a bar of baby soap to encourage attendance. Bhanu has been a very consistent participant in the classes, and has even recruited her two sisters, who also have young toddlers, to join!

Thank you, Carrie (x2), Shari and Jennifer for coming together to ensure that Bhanu is able to attend parenting classes for an entire year. She will now be able to do all she can to ensure that her children have a headstart in life.