The main activities designed to
attain our goals are:
Cultural action.
Training.
Formation of agricultural labourers’
unions and organization of women.
Formation of Thrift and Credit Mutually
Aided Cooperatives for women
Organization of Dalits.
Income supplementing programmes
Housing,
Human Rights Education
Protect the children from the social
evils such as Early marriages, Bonded Labour
Provide education to the labouring
children, children from the streets and the School Dropouts.
Origin:
PARA came into existence in 1986. It
was registered as a separate organization from the Don Bosco Mission for
developing a wider ideological base, administrative independence and legal
standing. It is also registered with the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of
India under the Foreign Contribution and Regulation Act, 1976.
Functioning:
PARA had initially functioned at
Ravulapalem till 1993 with the financial grant of Don Bosco Society. As there
was a growing need for huge external grant in accordance with the expanding
needs it entered into an agreement with the
Bread for the World, as its project partner.
The work we do has received
tremendous response from the people of concern as well as the general public of
the area and a considerable change has been brought about in the living
standards of the people of the service domain. The large scale adherence of
people to the movement for Dalit empowerment launched by PARA., people’s
spontaneous sensitivity to the emerging issues, their inherently built capacity
to address independently the outstanding and impending problems that they
confront in day to day life, transformation of their attitude towards self and
others, gaining acceptance as fellow citizens with dignity, fairness, equality
and equity in social process will definitely corroborate the above view point
PARA feels that it has, however, to go a long way in the alleviation of
socio-economic and political penury particularly in the changed political
context.
Current Operation:
Currently we are operating in three
Mandals at Konaseema region of East Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh. They
are: a) Athreyapuram , b) Ravulapalem
c) Kothapeta. The total area covered by the three mandals
is about 240 sq.km.
Since our main aim is to organize the unorganized Dalit (depressed class)
agricultural laborers, we has established a close collaboration with some of the
other partners of BFW like Salaha, Janachetana and Krushi so as to make its work
more result oriented.
Building on these initial collaborative venture PARA has along with like minded
NGO’s been able to set up DAPPU a dalit bahujan network promoting Community
Based Organisation for Rights and Entitlements and for Economic Development
through promotion of Mutually Aided Cooperative Societies by scaling up women
SHGs. In this larger effort PARA is also being supported by
Christian Aid and
Cord
Aid.
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Ekalavya Training Centre was inaugarated in
the year 1995, to train people on goal setting, work plan development, giving
inputs in the different areas of their work, minimum wages, land related laws,
human rights def-ence and promotion, thrift and credit, gender sensitivity,
child-rights cultural concerns.
The Broad
areas of Training given under the umbrella of ETC are:
- Human Rights Promotion;
- Land related issues concerning the
subaltern communities;
- The need for role models of
successful Mutually Aided Cooperative Societies for women for their economic
development and empowerment.
- New ways of responding to the
problem of school drop outs and child vagrancy;
- Creation of Alternative Theatre –
Street theatre and Play back theatre;
- Research in Subaltern Identity and
Psychology.
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Children from the Streets:
Taking care of
innocent children is one of the prime concerns of PARA. Run-away kids found in
the Railway and Bus Stations of the nearest river town of Rajahmundry are first
sheltered in an open care shelter in Rajahmundry itself and in later on inorder
to impart basic education and other skills they are brought here to safety and
are educated .
Labouring Children :
In the 3 mandals of
our operation, several children of the dalit community are not sent to education
as they cannot afford to and instead they are sent to work to earn money. These
children are rescued from places of work and are brought to PARA after
convincing the parents and basic education is imparted.
After successful
completion of the basic education, these little ones are then sent to Don Bosco
Boarding School in Ravulapalem or the Government Schools in the vicinity. During
holidays, PARA becomes their home .
Special Classes for 10th Standard failed
Students :
It was also a common observation that
many of the children, who fail in their 10th Standard due to various reasons are
discontinuing their studies.
In order to encourage these children to
go for further studies, We are specially collecting all the failed students
immediately after the results are declared and are giving them special coaching
classes with some of the best teachers, so that they will be passing their
exams.
Over the past few years, it has been
observed that roughly around 70% come out in the supplementary exams as a result
of these classes.
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