Projects

Working to eradicate labor and increase the school assistance in the poorest areas of North Chennai Since 2015, Karunalaya is conducting daily supplementary classes in some of the 12 different slums of the poorest areas of North Chennai.
There are many reasons why children drop out of school. Poverty, broken family, misconduct in the school and lack of interest lead the child to drop out from their studies. As a result, the children engage in various unwanted affairs and lose interest in studying. This situation leads them to become working children. We conduct a survey every academic year in order to identify labourer and dropout children in our intervention areas and work with the families to create consciousness about the importance of school education.
In order to eradicate child labour and increase the school assistance in the poorest areas of North Chennai, Karunalaya mobilizes vulnerable children dwelling in the streets and slum areas, and enrol them in the ”Supplementary Education – No child left behind” program, offering them the opportunity to develop in terms of education, leadership training and other curricular activities. All students are part, as well, of the ”The Children’s Club”, a meeting place where kids are encouraged to exhibit their talents.
The program covers the following subjects: Tamil, English, Mathematics, Social Science, Science and Project Work. Training and support will be provided in areas such as Behavioural Change, Basic Life Skills, Personality Development, Time Management and Self Discipline to promote individual development.

The women empowerment plays a vital role in all the perspective of women‟s life. It is creating impact on socio, economic, political and cultural phenomena. The women empowerment not only improving the economical status but it provides adequate space of social participation, decision making in the family and community, involving and improving the civil society activities and understanding the overall perspective of women. So the empowerment is a political wheel which improves the all aspects of women‟s life. It also creating awareness, finding solution for their day to day problems like all forms of gender discrimination, physical and sexual harassment and abuse and work load etc. So it is highly essential to motivate the women for quality way to empowerment is inevitable in the present globalization

Women empowerment is still a distant dream inIndia. A clear vision is needed to remove the obstacles to the path of women’s emancipation both from the society and women themselves. Efforts should be directed towards all round development of every Indian woman by giving them their due share.

Karunalaya already step in women’s development with the clear perspective by promoting Self Help Group as a first step. It is a really progressive activity in the initial stage by formation of women‟s Committee. There are number of positive attitudes and behavior had been achieved among the women for promotion of women Committee. The women developed their unity and sharing experiences, understanding their economical problems and come together for find out solution. They have to go to second step to understand the overall societal problems scientifically and find out the space for them to activate their own programs on economic development as well as the socio, political empowerment.

Objectives

• To promote leadership among women inNorth Chennaiby imparting communication skills
• To sensitize the community on gender and mainstreaming and prevent domestic violence against women.
• To empower women to adopt advocacy and lobby as a strategy to fight for the rights of their community.
• To provide entrepreneurship development training programs and provide base for economical sustainable development of women

Empowerment of Pavement Dwelling Community

Pavement dwelling families are one of the most marginalized communities in the City ofChennai, without being recognized as official settlements and their right to housing denied for many decades. Karunalaya works to protect the children in these families by providing opportunities to join schooling and continue education by offering supplementary evening classes near to their dwellings. Women in the families are also being formed into women self help groups and provided with training on leadership skills, economic development activities and rights based empowerment.

For the first time inChennaiCity, the pavement dwellers formed an association called Pavement Dwellers Rights Association (PDRA) with the guidance and support of Karunalaya.

The main objective of the PDRA is to bring the 40000 odd families living on the pavements across Chennai for years under one umbrella and collectively fight for their rights. The aim is to be independent, people lead and subscription based to evolve as a movement in the state. Many efforts have been taken including, demonstration, petitions, press meet and sensitization of civil society organizations to strengthen the actions.