170 Students. 1 Community. Million Dreams.

Who are we?

Divya Shetty, a class teacher of 92 8th graders along with Swaati Sawaikar and Sohaib Beg and Vaibhavi Ratishkumar and Natasha Chaturvedi teach 78 6th graders. All 5 of us are trying to raise funds for our 170 students.

Our school, Elia Sarwat English High School, is located in Malwani, Malad. After Dharavi, Malwani is one of the largest slums in Mumbai. Malwani is home to migrants from all over the country. Majority of our students face a problem of alcoholism  and drug abuse in their family. Domestic violence is something that they see everday in their homes.

Inspite of all these problems, our kids dream of studying and going to colleges of their choice. Our classrooms are a safe haven for a lot of these students where they can get away from their problems for atleast a few hours in a day and dream about a better future.

Whenever we ask them about their community problems, they display what we adults sometimes fail to display. Acceptance. They are also brimming with ideas on solving these community problems. These kids are leaders already because it needs a great deal of self-belief and courage to have ambition, given the current scenario of their communities.

The 5 of us, are trying our best to help these kids reach their goals in life with the best possible resources that we can give them so that they get a conducive environment to study and start their journey of transformational education.

Fund and details

Classroom Supplies, Annual day and Sports day expenses, Field trips, Books for libraries and apparatus for science lab - INR 2,15,000

Establishment and functioning of Community centre in the community - INR 85,000

Why donate to this cause?

Students in our school community face the daily issues of alcoholism, abuse, poverty and violence. They don’t learn about these issues by reading a book or watching the news. They are the ones who face these issues day in and day out. Their commitment to eradicate the problems and change this country is much stronger than any of us. If we educate these children, we give them a chance to be changemakers for our society.

A couple of years back, a few of our students had identified the issue of alcoholism which was rampant in Malwani and helped in their own small way to spread the message of non-alcoholism. You can check the video of their campaign here.

One of our students tried in her own small way to prevent eve-teasing in her community. You can read more about it here.

See some of our students talk about the water scarcity problems in Malwani here

Even at this young age, these students are trying to make a difference to their communities in their own small ways.
 

A little more about our Students

In the last couple of years, these are just some of the achievements by our students.

1.  Drama Champions at Jhankaar, an interschool cultural festival (2014)

2. Dance finalists at Jhankaar, an interschool cultural festival (2014)

3. Football champions at Just for Kicks, an interschool football tournament (Junior Boys 2014)

4. Cricket champions at The Right Pitch, an interschool cricket tournament (2014)

5. Parliamentary debate champions at Halla Bol, an interschool parliamentary debate competition. (Junior Team, 2015)

6. Semi finalists at Just For Kicks, an interschool football tournament (2015)

7. Cricket champions at The Right Pitch, an interschool cricket tournament (2015)

8. One of our student Kashif Abbas, was a part of the child jury at the JIO Mami Film Festival in 2015

9. Nine of our girls were awarded the Avsara Scholarship for their excellent academic records.

10. Three of our students got a chance to attend the Youth Empowerment Summit conducted by Mr. Anand Chulani. Mr. Chulani is a peak performance coach for a lot of sportsmen as well as the Kings XI Punjab team in IPL.

For any more information feel free to mail me – natashachaturvedi94@gmail.com

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