(Madhav Ranganathan - madhavr@stanford.edu)

Site Visit Report: Inner Wheel Social Welfare and Eastern
Education Trust (SWEET), Ambernath, Maharashtra

Date: July 17 2002

Background Information: SWEET was founded by Shri P.S.Mane and his son 
Rahul. The executive committee of the trust consists a group of people 
who
were classmates at Nirmala Niketan College of Social Work, Mumbai.
Rahul Mane is currently working in Delhi working for HUDCO; his father
Shri P.S. Mane resides in Ambernath and is currently supervizing
the day-to-day working of the project. SWEET is currently running
two balwadis(pre-primary) schools in two slums in Ambernath. Their
plan is to run 6-8 more balwadis in Ambernath. The balwadis were
started about 10 days ago. Currently Rahul Mane is waiting for
approval of FCRA so that he can accept further funding to run the
other balwadis. Ambernath is a distant suburb of Mumbai city which
takes about 1.5 hrs by suburban train from Mumbai city.

Getting there: Rahul picked me up from Ambernath station (East)
and took me to his home which is about 7 mins by scooter. At
Rahul's house we were joined by Pradeep Shinde and Vinod U Meshram, who
are also closely associated with SWEET and Ashish Chaddha (from
Asha Stanford). Pradeep Shinde is a former classmate of Rahul Mane
and Ashish (Asha Stanford) from Nirmala Niketan. Pradeep is
currently working with Nirmaan, an organization working with Union
workers in New Mumbai. Vinod is Rahul's cousin and is supervizing
the project. We went by autorickshaw (10 mins) to the first
balwadi in a slum near a locality called Guru Nanak Nagar. After
visiting the first balwadi, we took an autorickshaw (10mins) back
to Ambernath Rlwy Stn. We walked to the west side of the station
and took another autorickshaw (10mins) to the second balwadi which
is in a slum called Bhindipada.

The Visit: We walked through the first slum near Guru Nanak Nagar.
Despite being a slum area, the locality was reasonably organized
and clean. The slum community has been around in the area since
1976. There is a public school in Guru Nanak Nagar close to the
slum. The people in the slum are migrants from different parts of
Maharashtra. There are a number of industries in and around
Ambernath and people from the slums either work in those
industries or as small time labourers working in loading and other
little jobs. We walked for about 100 feet into the slum and came
to the site of the first balwadi. This is a 12ftX12ft room which I
think was serving as a Buddha temple. There was a statue of Buddha
and posters of Ambedkar in the room. When we entered there were
about 15 kids in there from ages 3-5.

The class was in session with about 15 students. The kids were
sitting on the floor in a little circle. A teacher was standing
and conducting the class(I do not remember what she was teaching
at that time). The teacher Vidya has completed her second year BA. The 
kids were quite surprised and a little scared seeing so many of us so 
we had to go slowly.
Some little ones started crying and were being controlled by
others. Due to some rain earlier in the day, the kids were a
little late coming into school. The school runs Mon-Fri 10-12noon.
As of now they are still not sure about the exact numbers that
they expect through the year. The number of students on their list
is 31. Once these numbers stabilize, SWEET plans to start
providing snacks for the kids. We took some photographs of the
kids, looked at some of the teaching material and left the school.

We walked through the slums and met the local contact for the
slum. SWEET has been very careful to keep the entire community
informed about their work. Even before getting started, they went
to the slums and did a survey to find out the number of kids that
were in the slum that would avail of the balwadis. The presense of
local contacts in all the slums they work in is a feature of this
community involvement. In both the places we went to, it was the
community that had let them use the space to conduct the classes.

At the second balwadi we walked through the Bhindipada slum for a
few minutes with a few turns in narrow paths between houses. Again
we saw that the slum was reasonably clean and organized. As soon
as we entered the slum, we were joined by the local contact for
the slum. The class was run in the teachers house. There was a
large cot that was the only furniture and the kids were sitting on
the floor. There were kittens of all sizes running around in the
house much to our amusement. There were about 20 kids, though the
attendance register said there should be 31. The teacher was
teaching the students some poems in Marathi, and then she taught
them some numbers. The kids showed some interest and discipline,
given that it is their first time in an organized classroom, this
is a good start. The teacher was probably in her 30s and lived in
the house. Though she had not passed Std X, she looked very
comfortable dealing with the kids. There were a few other elders
in the room, not sure who they were. The class went on for a
little more time and then the kids were taken away by their
families. We stayed on for a little longer and had tea at the
house. Then we left the slum, walked through a neighbouring slum
called Buapada, before heading back to Ambernath. Incidently the
nearest school to Bhindipada slum is more than 5 kms away and one
finds that there are a lot of kids from the slum who go to school.
Later in the day, Pradeep and Rahul went to Mumbai to buy learning
toys for the kids.

Meanwhile we had the experience of seeing the politics of the slum
in action. There was another woman who came and asked about the
possibility of setting up a school in a nearby slum. She was
insisting to Rahul that they start another school there and Rahul
and the local contact had to spend a long time telling her that
she should send the kids from there to this school for the time
being and then they would start the other school in a few months.
The presence of a school is a source of a salary for the teacher
concerned even though it is not a large one.In the slums in these areas
the main parties are Republican Party of India and the Shiv Sena.

Opinions and Other Details: Rahul is really waiting on the FCRA
before which he plans to start the Balwadis in full swing. What
the people at SWEET are doing is something that is very difficult
and involves a lot of work. SWEET has done really well to have the
groundwork done before starting the project. There is no question
about the commitment of the people to the project and their own
qualifications. The presence of Balwadis in these slums will
ensure that the children will be prepared for primary school. This
will hopefully reduce the dropout rate in the schools. SWEET has a
vision of integrated development work in the slums in the long
run, but we should not read too much into that for the time being,
since this is really early days. We talked about how SWEET would
try to track the kids in the years after they left the Balwadis,
but that again is a few years down the line. Asha should
definitely look into a long term relationship with SWEET. The
benefits will go beyond just the SWEET project in the form of a
very resourceful group of people who can help us in other ways.