When love transforms lives

Sneha means love. The whole idea is to transform people''s lives with love. It was with this aim that Sneha began its activities in the Malin Basti of Dehradun in 1997. Says Dr Reeta Rao, the lady behind Sneha, who chose to leave her job as medical superintendent at Landour Community Hospital, Mussoorie, to work with the needy people, "It was an Australian friend, Barbara Deutschman, who chose the name for our endeavour.We believe that everything must be done with love and so she chose the name. I wanted to work in a place where nobody wanted to work and help the real needy people."
Rao first began with a literacy programme for the children of Govindgarh slum, which has a population of about 10,000 people and Gandhigram slum with a population of just 10,000 people. Sneha volunteers began teaching the children in the open in the basti itself. The population here basically comprises rag pickers, porters who work at the railway station and daily wage earners who have migrated from Bihar in search of work.
Says Rao, "Gradually Sneha moved to a one room tenement and later to a house and today we have a brand new building, part of which was sponsored by the Australian High Commission. The strength of the children has risen to 425 as on date. The rest of the building was built with help from different donors from the USA including Dr Kailash Joshi. Here I must mention the active involvement of Vijendra Paul, principal secretary to the chief minister. He was the only government official who went around the basti and felt that the people here needed more than ordinary help. He has continued to be a pillar of strength. Later with his efforts we built 15 Sulabh Sauchalayas (toilets) in Govindgarh where earlier these people used to go out in the open to defecate."
"Apart from the regular school, we also run an informal school for the basti children. Soon we realised that due to high illiteracy rate, the women in the basti had a very poor self-image. We enlisted the support of the local literacy department in 1997 and began introducing our women empowerment activities and adult literacy programme in the basti," she adds.
Initially the response was poor but later the team from Sneha found that education of their children was a great motivating factor for the women living in the basti. Explains Rao, "These women felt helpless as they could not supervise their children''s homework. They were asked to immediately join the literacy classes. I am happy that the children''s formal education, taken care of by Sneha, became an inspiration for the mothers."
Sneha gradually moved on to teaching livelihood skills to women of the basti.
Today women can learn a variety of livelihood skills at Sneha such as candle-making, block-printing, embroidery and sewing. The literacy programme was made compulsory for the students learning sewing skills. In the beginning, the literacy work was carried out with the help of literate volunteers from the slum. Later on some of the girls (who could only study till the junior classes in the Sneha School as they were not allowed to study any further by their parents, specially from the Muslim community) volunteered to help with the literacy classes. Shama Parveen is one such girl who first went through a programme in Sneha for a year. Today she is replicating the programme in the Muslim basti.
Rao is particularly upbeat about her self-help groups that include voluntary community health workers.
"Take the example of Tetari," says Dr Rao. "Earlier her face could not be seen, covered as it was under a long ghunghat (veil). But today she is the most vocal of our health workers. As a health volunteer she is now available to her community. And as a member of the Sneha Self-Help Group, in two months she saved Rs.10,000 just by working in households and collecting garbage. Members of the group put a certain amount of their earnings in a bank. They are taught to maintain a pass-book and as and when required these women take and give loans to each other too," she adds.
A special library is maintained in the slum in one of the households for the literate women to read out storybooks to their children. The library is taken care of by the community health volunteers. The literacy department provides these books.
A definite change of self-image can be seen in these women who gather happily at Sneha for a cup of tea followed by discussions. "Our aim is to see that more and more women become literate and empowered too, by taking active part in our empowerment measures," opines Rao who has the unstilted support of her husband Hari Rao who particularly takes care of the school programmes for children.
The story of Sneha is the story of how individual efforts can work wonders with the lives of the less fortunate.