Project Why

MITHU'S SCHOOL FUNDRAISER

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What We Do

WE EDUCATE

We believe in quality after-school education support for every child, regardless of their background.

WE EMPOWER

We believe in the power of the virtuous circle-by empowering the right people within the community

WE EMPLOY

We believe that the best resource persons to support our children’s education are from within communities.

OUR NEW NORMAL

After two long years schools have reopened and Project Why is once again brimming with activity. The children are back and it is a joy to hear their laughter again.

Classes have resumed in small groups and with all Covid precaution.

The children have suffered a big setback but we are determined to ensure that they make up their losses and reintegrate their classes without difficulty.

CENTRES

Over the years, Project WHY has opened 7 after school support centres within underprivileged communities reaching out to 1100 children every year.

Dipika Mukherjee, a well known writer from Chicago was in India recently. She was kind enough to find the time and run a small poetry workshop for the children of our Giri Nagar centre. The children were a little perplexed at first but Dipika soon broke the ice by...

Sports at the Yamuna centre

The Yamuna centre children had their very first sports 'day' with different and fun games. They really had great fun as this was something new for them. We hope that we can do more sports activities and maybe even organize a real Sports Day event in the center.

A year gone by

2022 turned out to be a rewarding year after many months spent wondering how we would carry on. The pandemic had been a huge blow though we managed to stay the course even on choppy seas. Thanks to all our well-wishers, friends and supporters who never stopped...

Manu

Two Angels landed in my life without any warning and changed my life forever. The first was Manu. Manu was the kind of being you pass on the street and never look at. To many he would be just a beggar who seemed deranged and bedraggled. He roamed a street I passed regularly. I often wondered what could have got him there, but it was a fleeting thought that disappeared in a trice. But one fateful day the heart...

Utpal

In March 2003, the day after Holi, we learnt that the 'little boy next door' had fallen in a boiling pot and, was believed to be dead. We barely knew him, as the family had shifted to Giri Nagar a few days earlier. We felt sorry for the baby, and went on with our lives A few days later, we heard that the baby was not dead, and was back from hospital. When we saw him, we were shocked. A little bundle swathed in...

The Boarding School

UTPAL, BABLI, ADITYA, VICKY, MEHER, MANISHA, YASH Like all else at Project Why the boarding school project began as an answer to a deafening why. In the summer of 2006 Utpal found he was without a home as his mother had to be admitted in a rehab urgently and the 'father' stole all he could from their minute home and vanished. Utpal needed a safe house and the answer was a good boarding school. He joined school at...

Heartfix Hotel

SPONSORING HEART SURGERIES FOR THOSE MOST IN NEED> True Project Why is first and foremost an education support programme but when seeing with your heart is its watchword then it takes no time to widen your horizons. Answering every Why that comes our way has been our endeavour and what can be a more deafening why than the cry of a helpless parent in search of support to repair her child's broken heart. And when...

Sanjay Padiyar: From camps to fashion Ramps

Sanjay’s story starts with a camp of the Lohars of Maharana Pratap, which has a longstanding relationship with Project WHY. The Lohars (ironsmiths) are a nomadic Indian tribe from Rajasthan (Chittorgarh), known to repair arms and shoe horses. One of their camps, containing 30 families, was located close to Project WHY Govindpuri centre. The sight of the Lohar children running and playing amongst the traffic light...

ANITA: The Power to say ‘No’

Anita’s relationship with Project WHY started in 2002 when she was a young girl studying in Class 3. Her father comes from Bihar and moved to Delhi in the late 80s to look for education. Due however to financial problems, he was forced to start working in the nearby factory at an early age and settled in the Giri Nagar area. In 2004, with Anita in Class 6, her father, the family’s sole earner, was told that there...

Geeta – A Girl Uninterrupted

Under the Right to Education (RTE) Act, passed in 2009, a free and compulsory education is guaranteed for all children aged between six and fourteen. The most recent figures for primary school enrolment in India stand at a seemingly impressive 98 per cent. But going to school is a very different thing from receiving a quality education. Those monitoring progress on the sustainable development goal of achieving...

Gyanti Devi – A stitch in time

Born to a poor family in Bihar, Gyanti Devi never had the opportunity to learn as a child. Soon after her marriage, her husband, who is severely handicapped, required treatment. This meant moving her life and her two children to Delhi in 2006, where they lived on rent in the village of Madanpur Khader. The area houses mostly migrant families and has a high dropout rate from government schools as well as issues of...

Bindaas Babli

When Babli first came to Project WHY in 2004, she was a bright-eyed, feisty girl; what some Indians would call Bindaas, meaning carefree and confident. She loved books and seemed to always have a smile. It took Project WHY’s resource persons some time to realize that every breath she drew was an effort. Babli had a hole in her heart from birth and needed corrective surgery. Her family was unable to come up with the...

Shehnaz: In pursuit of education

Whilst literacy is essential to breaking social barriers, the problems faced by Muslim women in India extend beyond this. A quality, broad education is required to combat the issues of poverty and political marginalization faced by these girls, and it is essential that parents encourage this. It has been observed that after the first few years of the primary education afforded to the Muslim girl, one of two things...

Munna: Passion for Life

Indian society continues to treat disability with indifference, pity or revulsion. Low literacy, school enrolment and employment rates are making mentally disabled people among the most excluded in Indian society. These people are deterred from taking an active part in most families or even communities. Moreover, there is a stigma attached to children with disabilities, especially in rural India, and often even...

Sehroonisha – Breaking Barriers

Muslim women are among the most educationally disenfranchised, economically vulnerable, and politically marginalized group in India. Their poor socio-economic status reflects a lack of social opportunity that, though not a feature exclusive to Muslim women, is exacerbated by their marginal status within an overall context for most Indian women. Muslim women in India have a low literacy rate compared to the...

Priya – Hungry for Education

Priya is a 5-year-old girl who lives on the Yamuna Floodplain. Her parents, like the majority of those living on the plain, have no skills other than farming. Priya lives with her parents, two brothers and two sisters. Nobody in the family has received any education, as the expectation is that they will join the family farming business. As soon as they are of age, they will learn to harvest vegetables, which their...

Meher – With a little Help from Our Friends

At the time of this photo, in January 2009, Meher was three years old and lived in Khader, near the outskirts of New Delhi. Her father was a migrant worker who came to New Delhi to work part of the year, and her family spent the rest of the year in their village in Nepal. When Meher was eight or nine months old, a mosquito net over her bed caught on fire. Miraculously, she survived the terrible burns, but the...

Naresh Sir, with Love

Project WHY opened its first spoken English class for secondary students in 2001 in Giri Nagar. It was the same time that Naresh had just completed his Bachelor’s degree in Arts and was looking for a job. He was a whizz mathematician and loved to teach, and to fulfill this passion he was giving tuitions to the neighborhood children, often for free. But in a poor home, one cannot afford to dream, for dreams do not...