Vibha – DSS Outreach Workshop kicks-offs in Pune

Vibha-DSS Outreach Workshop is a 3 day event being organized by Vibha in collaboration with Door Step School in Pune, India from Dec 6 – Dec 8 2012. Stay tuned for the latest from Pune.

The YMCA Poona Club, Pune was set buzzing with enthusiasm earlier today when 32 changemakers from around 15 different citizen sector organizations assembled here for a 3 day outreach workshop organized by Vibha in collaboration with Door Step School. All these organizations – selected after a thorough process to determine its dedication to scale and sustain impact – have been working in the education sector with various types of beneficiaries. The potential for impact can be gauged by the fact that all these organizations, in total, have positively impacted lives of over a million underprivileged children in India.

What is Door Step School [DSS]? [http://doorstepschool.org/]

What do you do when you can’t get kids of construction-site workers to school? It’s pretty simple; you take the school to these kids’ “Door Step”. During a time when India is getting used to purchase everything – from groceries to diapers – home delivered, it’s great to see certain social entrepreneurs taking this concept to the next level – or should I say to the ground-level!! The construction-site workers are employed only for the duration of the project and might keep re-locating. This movement adversely affects the education of their kids. DSS, through its various initiatives, tries to track and provide quality education to these kids, either by getting them enrolled to near-by municipality schools or getting a mobile education van to the site. I’d recommend you to go through this beautifully shot documentary to know more about how the DSS model works.

Documentary – http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6LrjkupYArM

Why is Vibha interested?

Vibha, over the years, has evolved into a social-venture capitalist, which seeds, grows and scales grassroots ideas which solve systemic problems related to under-privileged children. The DSS-model is one such idea which has the potential to create large-scale impact if implemented wisely across various cities in India. True to its mission, Vibha, through this workshop, aims to provide a platform to bring various changemakers with a can-do attitude under one roof to learn more about the DSS’s scalable-and-sustainable solution.

Why the workshop?

Currently Door Step School, Pune is working at 100+ constructions sites in Pune metropolitan area. But with the continued surge in construction activity in Pune and across the country, this is barely scratching the surface. Many children are still unattended and going without any opportunities for education. With maturity of processes and methodologies developed with years of experience at Door Step School, they wish to share this proven model with other organizations working with such marginalized children and take the baton of spreading literacy message to many more families of construction site workers and migrant families, not only in Pune but throughout India. Thus, this will be a first step reaching out to more number of unreached children from more construction sites and migrant community.

What after the workshop?

The organizations which express interest in adopting this model will be offered a collaborative partnership with DSS where all necessary guidance, inputs, materials and training will be provided.

Highlights of the day:

Zankhana Patel, Director – Vibha India, opened the workshop by giving the participants an overview of Vibha and its mission. After a round of introduction by all the attendees, Rajini Tai ran the participants through various initiatives taken up by DSS in Pune. Next, the chief-guest, Dr. D K Abhayankar , Director-General of CREDAI, Pune threw light on various initiatives being taken by the builder’s community for the welfare of construction-site workers. Financial inclusion, health, sanitation and training were some of the issues covered by these initiatives. As the day ended, the participants were eagerly looking forward to their field-trips to various DSS sites tomorrow. Stay tuned for more from Pune.