Meera Malek
Social WorkerMeera Malek Education: BA in Psychology Experience: 24 years of work in social development sector Achievement: International Service Human Rights
Empowering Futures Through Education and Care
Nourishing Lives, Nurturing Futures
Caring for Minds, Changing Lives
The activity of education of slum-under privileged children was informally started before 4 years of formal registration. Money obtained by collection of Pasti and other non-usable items like junk bottles, utensils, etc. was used to pay fees of these children. The pioneer of Kadam Ms. Meera Mehta Malek started small education centers in Ganeshnagar, Piplaj. About 125 children were given supportive education and then put in main stream. These children were mainly orphans, single parent children, children begging on streets, children of sex workers, child laborers and dropouts.
When the people displaced from the river front, were given space in Piplaj for their stay, the number of children increased. One episode shook Meera ben from the core. One girl coming to the Kadam center had to be rescued from child trafficking. This was possible by the alertness and timely action by the teachers-cum-Bal dosts of Kadam namely Rajni, Sajeda and Savitaben. After this incident, the eagerness to do much more for these children and especially the girls rose tremendously. Need was felt, and the informal activity was formalized and Kadam Education Trust was registered.
Pasti is now regularly collected from Individuals and societies like Sumadhur II Ambawadi, Basant Bahar II Bopal, Elite Flats Sahibaug; Nebula Towers S. G. Highway etc. to name a few. All activities of Pasti collection is carried out by the support of civil society members and Bal dosts named above. Last year education of 46 children was sponsored and they were admitted to private Guajarati medium schools. This year Kadam has a target of 100 children – focusing mainly on the girl child.
All the civil society supporters of Kadam have formed a formal Group and meet regularly each month. All the people work in harmony with one single view – how we can change the life of these children.
Children who require financial support to complete their education, KET pays their fees directly in schools. KET also helps children during their academic years if they need any other support.
Total ______ children over _____ years have been supported by paying fees of Rs. _____ in various schools.
Nutrition is important aspect for the physical growth of any child. The families KET is working are poor and have limited food wich has high value of nutrition. Organization provides raw ration like Maze, Moong, Tuver Dal, rice, Khajoor, which has high volume of protein, carbohydrates, iron and other nutritious ingredients.
Total 234 children have been supported by providing nutritional food over the period of 6 years.
This support is not one time to any individual but it continues for a year at least to bring out that child from malnutrition.
An alien aspect Mental health is emerging another major issue in recent time. Stress due to many uncertainties like job, income, competition to showcase superiority, malfunctioning of technology, workload, impractical desire and rapidly changing world and technologies pushing individual in a dark gorge. Hundreds of people have ended their life for not able to manage stress and pressure.
If we consider children and youth, the control over usage of technology by them is a big question. Particularly revolution in communication aspect, the world has been changed like nothing. Use of various social media, play stations, freely accessible adult contents and many more have created unbelievable bad impacts in young minds. Bad reading and contents have overcame the good readings and information. Stressed life crating many challenges for these young people.
In this scenario counselling has very important role to play in society. It directly addresses the mental health of any individual. But, to accept and acknowledge the need of mental health treatment is another challenge.
KET provides that space where any child or young person come and share his/her feelings and gets proper inputs on that particular matter. This has helped many girls in improving her relations with parents, family members, peers and provide her to develop professional carrier too.
KET has supported 358 children as education scholarship to the most vulnerable segments of society for ensuring their formal education in schools and colleges, by mobilising Rs. 15,66,104 from 2013-2014.
Sr. No. | Year | Number of Children | Amount |
---|---|---|---|
1 | 2013-2014 | 75 | 2,13,219 |
2 | 2014-2015 | 73 | 2,66,382 |
3 | 2015-2016 | 65 | 2,73,065 |
4 | 2016-2017 | 52 | 1,08,147 |
5 | 2017-2018 | 9 | 28,240 |
6 | 2018-2019 | 6 | 23,641 |
7 | 2019-2020 | 19 | 83,215 |
8 | 2020-2021 | 18 | 1,20,576 |
9 | 2021-2022 | 26 | 3,00,769 |
10 | 2022-2023 | 2 | 11,200 |
11 | 2023-2024 | 3 | 78,000 |
12 | 2024-2025 | 10 | 59,650 |
Total | 358 | 15,66,104 |