Shala Project index

1. Background: Muktaa Charitable Foundation has been working in the field of HIV/AIDS since year 2005. MCF has also worked for ‘Sytematic Disclosure of their HIV status for children of age 12 and above from 2012 under ‘Ankur’ project.Over period while interacting with these families we realized the need of openly speaking about the basic scientific details of Sexuality. Its too late to wait for giving correct information,till someone is infected by some of the STD due to ignorance or lack of knowledge about
   these things.
   With this background, MCF has prepared a module to conduct Life skill education sessions with children age 13-16yrs in various schools under project ‘SHAALA- BEYOND BOOKS’.Helping the adolescent in their healthy psychological development through various Life skills education is the best thing we can do for them in their formative years. Analytical/Critical thinking, Creative thinking, Decision making, Inter-personal relationship management etc are the key areas that once channelized will help these people deal with any situation of High Risk Behavior.
   Aim & Objective: SHAALA-BEYOND BOOKS believes children learn many important lessons of life during their period of schooling beyond the regular subjects like History and Geography. To facilitate this learning of various Life skills, MCF has begun with this initiative.
   Beneficiaries: We have covered around 500 adolescents children of 13-16 yrs age in schools in Pune City and peripheral places. and aspire to reach 5000 in academic year 2016-17
   Method: MCF prepared a Tailor made Module by reading through various UNICEF & WHO modules on Life skills Education. Analytical Critical thinking, Creative thinking, Decision making, Inter-personal relationship management are the main focus areas our modules. The aim is equip these at risk children to stay away from addictions and high risk sexual behavior.
    We trained volunteers from general population, right from house wives to retired stakeholders teachers with Psychology background to conduct sessions
    We have set up a Helpline number to deal with unanswered queries and individual counseling with help of expert counselors
    We have also designed a simple questionnaire like a personal diary for introspection before answering their learning from the sessions
   Main Headings of the Module:
   1) Self Awareness & Self Confidence
   2) Swachchta(Cleanliness)
   3) Inter personal relationship (Family; Friends; Love relation)
   4) Communication skills
   5) Addictions and abuse- Identify the Risky Behaviour
   6) Changes on the Horizon of Adolescence
   7) Stress Management, Negotiation skills
   8) Sexually transmitted Diseases & their Prevention

Work list for Shala volunteers:
• Developing themselves into trained Resource person by weekly group meeting discussions and buddy training
• Forming a common consent about the numbers and contents of the Shala sessions with schools authority
• Conducting sessions accordingly with subject experts and volunteers through discussions, stories, role play and a few other activities.
• Worksheets for children’s own introspection
• Compiling the feedback from children’s forms and plan a follow-up mechanism in the school
• Participate in the process of making a small reference book for school library

Schools Covered In 2015-16
In this academic year, we covered following schools in Saswad and Pune with 2 sessions of 1.5-2 hrs in each school. The response of students and teachers along with the principal of the schools was extremely positive. We were flooded with their innocent but important questions that were following us till we got seated in our cars. The school authority were uniformly commenting that they had never received such detailed knowledge about this important and most crucial subject for their students ever before.
A few names of the schools we covered:
 S N Agarwal School Dattawadi Pune 60 children
 Japtap Municipality School Dattawadi 35 children
 Shivaji English Medium school Saswad 65 children
 Gurukul Vidyalaya Saswad 80 children
 Kanya Prashala Saswad 54 Girls
 Kanishtha Vidyalaya Purandare Taluka 100 children
 Madhyamik Vidyalaya –(Village-Hirvi) Saswad 55 children
 Madhyamik Shala Bhivari- Saswad 60 children
 Shala –Chikhali Saswad 65 children

Requirements for future development:
To make our sessions creating more impact, we need,
• 1) LCD projector – to create better impact through display of pictures and short educative movie films during session
• 2) A financial help for a paid counselor with salary of Rs10,000/month, to achieve consistency in work, professional discipline with doubling our efforts for achievement towards our goal
• 2) A video and voice recorder for recording the sessions for evaluation purpose and for further taking these sessions to places we cannot physically reach.

Beyond Books’ is our new initiative since 2015. MCF prepared a Tailor made Module by reading through various UNICEF WHO modules on Life skills Education. This module of two sessions of one hour each is prepared for 8 th , 9 th , 10 th standard students. Main topics covered are Self-confidence & Self Identity, Drugs Addiction, Interpersonal Relationship, Physical changes in this age. Since 2015 we have interacted with over 8000 students from various schools in and around Pune

For more details
Write to rupa.agarwal@mcf.org.in Or call: 98226 44886

‘A small help from each individual can make National Revolution!
Let’s work towards a better tomorrow’.