School

In cities like Noida, there is migratory population from villages which takes up petty jobs as laborers and maids. For most of them, survival is a struggle. They live in slums and do not have spare resources to enable their children to get an education.

Educating these children is essential to not only prepare them to face the challenges of the world in a much better way, but also help in the social and economic emancipation of this population. With this focus SOUL decided to work towards educating these children. Today, SOUL has become a well-known NGO for education in Noida.

To create a model for educating these children, SOUL started a school in Village Besai, Noida and named it SOUL Gurukul. This school was informally started on 13 December 2012 by gathering few children who were not going to school. Initially, these children were given crayons and drawing sheets to awaken the interest to learn in them. Indoor games such as carrom were arranged for them to instill the habit of sitting down since they were in a habit of roaming around the whole day. Soon, this caught the attention of more children and a formal curriculum was introduced to teach them Arithmetic, Hindi and English, along with basic life skills.

Our volunteers also visited the slums and motivated the parents to send their children to the school. Persuading the parents to send the girls to the school was a different challenge altogether. The efforts of SOUL volunteers started to bring a change in the mindset of the parents and soon the strength of the school grew to 55, with 50 percent of them being girls.

For empowering the girls, SOUL soon started sewing and cooking classes for them. Now SOUL is well recognized as an NGO supporting girl education.

Currently, the school is providing quality education to 60 children. We are constantly trying to generate more resources to outreach many more such children. Of the various NGO schools in Noida, SOUL Satya Hari School is recognized for setting benchmarks for all NGOs in child education in India.

SOUL GURUKUL strives to imbibe and sustain the formal education framework for those who can’t afford. The children are taught by trained teachers, who tirelessly work to bring them to the level of other school-going children. SOUL supports the children, who pass the second standard, to get admission in public schools under the EWS scheme. SOUL has been able to arrange the admission of 3 children in 2015, 4 children in 2016, 7 children in 2017, and 8 children in 2018 to formal schools.

To ensure overall development of the children, SOUL arranges regular medical camps by doctors who support us with free consultations. Medicines are arranged with our resources. To imbibe the values of personal health and hygiene in the children, the doctors also hold counselling sessions.

During medical camps, it was observed that most children were suffering from malnutrition as they do not have access to proper food. Thus, mid-day meals were initiated in the school in January 2016 with the support of an organization, Udaan Foundation. However, more support is needed to make the food wholesome.