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IMPACT STORIES
BABY SANA
Mohammed and Reshma are migrants from Assam working as waste pickers in the Kariyammana Agrahara settlement.
In July 2023, Reshma gave birth to a baby girl. Less than a month later, the baby developed high fever and convulsions. Our Health Clinic in the community was the first point of help for the family.
Our Health and BUPSP teams rushed into action. Anxious hours of enquiring at hospitals, working out options, and arranging ambulance services led to the baby being successfully treated at the NICU in Indira Gandhi Hospital at a reduced cost.
Despite being BPL (Below Poverty Line) card holders, the family was unable to get the benefit of free treatment at the government hospital because they are out-of-state migrants, and their documents from Assam are not valid in Karnataka.
Program interventions like ours help in making last mile connections for displaced families who have no safety nets in the city.
MINA
Mina’s family hails from Karnataka’s Yadgir district. Her father is a construction worker and mother works as domestic help. The family migrated to Bengaluru 20 years ago in search of livelihoods after years of drought in their village made it difficult to earn a living.
In 2016, Mina’s elder brother joined our Bridge Program at GHPS Kodathi, and 4-year-old Mina was enrolled into Buds to start her learning journey. She was in Grade 2 when the pandemic struck in 2020. Throughout this time, our teachers worked hard to ensure there was no break in our children’s education. When government schools reopened at the end of 2021, Mina was learning at her grade level thanks to these efforts.
In Grade 4, Mina and some of her peers started evening classes to prepare them for The Samhita Academy’s Ankur Scholarship entrance exam. Ankur selects children from underserved communities in Karnataka to join their hostel at Grade 5, training them in English to mainstream them into Samhita Academy’s CBSE classrooms. Mina was selected in June 2023 and is continuing to work hard. We are fortunate to have found another organisation who also believes in the potential of education to break the cycle of poverty.
RAMESHA
Ramesha’s parents - contract sweepers with BBMP (Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike) - moved to Bengaluru 18 years ago. Their son had to stay back with his grandparents in their village in Andhra Pradesh.
The pandemic took a toll on the family and in 2022 Ramesha was forced to drop out of college and join his parents in the city to earn a living as a construction worker. The turning point that year was when Ramesha attended a community meeting conducted by the Coordinator and Community Associates of our Janadhikara team.
The meeting opened up doors for Ramesha to an upskilling program with Reaching Hand - an NGO that skills youth in basic computer skills and English communication. This got him a cashier's job at D-Mart.
Ramesha still aspired to finish a degree and secure his future.
With the guidance of our Janadhikara team, he enrolled into a three-year degree course in General Operation Theatre (G-OT) Nursing at the SLES College of Nursing in Chintamani, Kolar district.
Information and bridging connections to the right resources empowered Ramesha. He now has a visible pathway to a skilled job that gives him social mobility.
ZEENAT
Zeenat was one of the first 25 children in our inaugural Gubbachi Connect program at Kodathi back in 2015. She was thriving in Class 6 when the pandemic took the family back to their village in Raichur, North Karnataka.
Post pandemic, Zeenat’s family returned to the city with much of their lives in crisis. Zeenat had continued studying in her village school but her father Rameez, a daily wage earner, had had his leg amputated. The family were reeling under huge debts to pay his medical expenses. Zeenat’s mother Hinabai was now the sole breadwinner.
It became less and less feasible for Zeenat and her elder sister to continue with their education. Her sister got engaged, while Zeenat joined her mother to earn a supplementary income as a domestic help.
We spent hours with the family, talking them through the opportunities available through education. We secured a scholarship for Zeenat to augment the family’s income, and put her on a fast track curriculum towards NIOS Class 10 certification.
Zeenat is working hard towards a brighter future.
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