Rukhsana enrolled in the Agrasar Bachpan centre in May 2015. Her attendance was highly and mostly she would appear without having a bath and wearing unclean clothes. The teachers spoke to her mother, finding out that Rukhsana has been completely on her own for most of the day, unable to take care of herself at the age of 5. Following intense and continuous conversations with her mother, things began to improve. Rukshana started coming to the centre regularly with a proper batch and clean clothes. She has been mainstreamed into the 1st standard of Government Primary School, Sikanderpur Village, in April this year and has been promoted to the 2nd standard within 5 months.
Progressing with the community
Agrasar is a Social Impact Organization (NGO) working with disadvantaged communities in India to further equitable access to education, safe schooling, employability and livelihood opportunities. Our operations are centered in Gurgaon spreading out to nearby regions directly or in partnership with community based organizations.
What we do
Education
Under 'Agrasar Bachpan' Program we reach out to out-of-school children and help them attain age-appropriate learning levels with a larger goal of main-streaming them into formal schools. Agrasar also builds the capacities of government schools and anganwadi centres to impart quality education.
Employability
We build fundamental employability competencies in disadvantaged youth and help them acquire gainful employment. Besides skilling, we also seek to influence labour demand factors such as employer attitude, contractual agreements, fair compensation, shift patterns, and social security provisions.
Livelihood
We empower non-working women in slums and villages of Gurugram who aspire to be financially independent through establishing an eco-system of home-based jobs. Our efforts here has led to the curation of an enterprise called Societymaker.
Safe Schools
We motivate and empower children, their parents, teachers and other stakeholders to show solidarity against Corporal Punishment and apply better, non-violent means for achieving their educational objectives. This initiative to make schools safer is aptly known as 'Kaagaz ki Kashti'
Our Impact
Agrasar Bachpan
Agrasar Centre for Employability
Pratima moved to Gurgaon after her marriage three years ago. Here, she noticed that many women were going out to work, earning money for themselves and their family. But when she applied for a tele-calling role, she was rejected for not having adequate English and IT skills. However, following completion of our employability training program, she easily secured a job as a Computer Operator, and later decided to follow her passion to work as a teacher again. “Earlier, the decision to quit a job was not so easy for me, but the training has given me the confidence to plan and take such decisions regarding my career”, she says. Pratima always keep in touch with the team at centre and this inspires us a lot.
We train 1200 youth like Pratima every year through 6 Employability Centres. More than 80% of them are placed across different industries. More than 95% of them continue to work at least till follow-up period of 6 months.
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Societymaker
Neelu is a cheerful Societymaker. She has been residing in Sikanderpur village with her husband and two children from the past eleven years. With the household responsibilities, she realized that she couldn’t go out of the community to work. But at the same time she aspired to “earn a livelihood in order to contribute to her family and add meaning to her life”. Neelu was brimming with hope and positivity when she joined us and that continued. With a smile on her face Neelu shares, “with flexible working hours I can take care of home, children and also learn new skills at the centre”. She also feels that through this program she has been able to “meet and interact with people from varied backgrounds who motivate and inspire her”.
We work with 100 women like Neelu, over 4 locations in Gurugram. We train them into making handicraft items and help them market these products. Our Societymakers save or invest most of the earnings in value adding activities.
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Kaagaz ki Kashti
Neelu is a cheerful Societymaker. She has been residing in Sikanderpur village with her husband and two children from the past eleven years. With the household responsibilities, she realized that she couldn’t go out of the community to work. But at the same time she aspired to “earn a livelihood in order to contribute to her family and add meaning to her life”. Neelu was brimming with hope and positivity when she joined us and that continued. With a smile on her face Neelu shares, “with flexible working hours I can take care of home, children and also learn new skills at the centre”. She also feels that through this program she has been able to “meet and interact with people from varied backgrounds who motivate and inspire her”.
We work with 4 communities in Gurugram as of now. The issue of Corporal Punishment is all pervasive, however we have begun from areas where Bachpan Centres are located so that there can be symbiotic relationship between the two programs.
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Learn about our Impact Philosophy
Our Impact Philosophy
Even though we understand that designing scalable interventions is important, we do not believe in targeting numbers. Whenever being asked the question - "How is it going?", our team members would normally talk about students and people - successes achieved or challenges being faced in particular cases. We also try to be fair and objective in communicating about 'impact' to all stakeholders. e.g. you would often hear us mentioning that - "Around 20% of the youth who come to our Employability Centres would have gone in similar jobs had they not joined us. Therefore, we need to find even better avenues of placement." We would also talk about children who we were not able to mainstream. We share our successes as well as challenges so as to attract people and organizations in our journey who mean to make a "real impact".
Our People
Blog
Strong Children or Broken Men
I remember my days in a missionary residential school years back. Many memories are great, that of friends, playing football in torrential rain, the mischief ...
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‘Unearthing alternatives to corporal punishment’
Some thoughts to ponder on: Apparently, Corporal Punishment is a world-wide phenomenon. It’s being fought against, just like many other forms of discrimination are being ...
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Resilience
Sharing an experience of a lifetime. An attempt to explain ourselves the meaning of the term – “Resilience”. I learnt this over last one week ...
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