Social Work Volunteer Opportunities

A Guest Post by Deepalaya: 

Franklin D. Roosevelt rightly said that, “The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide for those who have too little.“

This is the idea why Deepalaya came up with the project on Education on Wheels (EOW), a mobile school for the underprivileged. With this project, Deepalaya wants to provide education at the door step to all those who are out of school, to enable the children not attending school at all to acquire a certain minimum education and - if possible - to mainstream the successful children in formal schools through Open Basic Education. Since this is a completely different concept of teaching, Deepalaya has designed a different curricular all together.

The EOW project initiated in 2006 with the purpose of identifying and reaching out to marginalized children through innovative and joyful teaching methodologies - in order to attract and retain out of school and working children. The basic aim is to educate children at risk in an alternative way using a mobile unit to achieve a high accessibility & education at the doorsteps at a convenient time of the working children, thus allowing a maximum coverage of the target group. The concept of a mobile bus gives a complete solution for the shortage of space in the slums and therefore allows more utility. The set up in the bus improves its motivational quality and other basic facilities complies it into an innovative concept. 

The team of eight teachers tries to use new methods of teaching like flash cards, art and craft activity, games, story telling methods, role-plays, ice-breaking exercises, educational CD's etc in order to make learning as interesting as possible. The classes are held five days a week in the bus equipped with the required accessories like TV, DVD/ VCD, Music System, Computer, etc.

Target Area/Group:

The area to be covered by the mobile unit was well surveyed before it came up. The immediate target group of this pilot project is "street and working children" in North-West Delhi. About 1000 street and working children were identified and more than 400 in four locations were motivated. They participate regularly in the activities and learning exercises at the various locations of Education on Wheels.
At present Deepalaya is reaching out to 479 children through non formal education, remedial classes, study tours, exposure trips, health check ups, awareness sessions on personal hygiene, de-addiction, life-skills, safe environment etc.

Beyond Books: 


The children are encouraged in activities like theatre workshops, poster making, sports etc in order to bring out their latent talent. Apart from this, Deepalaya initiates a lot of exposure visits for the children to show them the world beyond books. For instance twenty four children from the project participated in Yamuna Yatra organized by GE in collaboration with other NGO's like We for Yamuna, Swekchha and SOS. The visit was aimed to make children conscious and sensitive about water pollution in Yamuna, (the river flowing through the heart of Delhi) and what one can do to prevent it. Besides such trips the teachers regularly take sessions on personal hygiene, de-addiction, life-skills, safe environment etc. with the children. Also, the children are encouraged to celebrate all the festivals like Diwali, Id and Christmas not withstanding the caste, creed and color etc.

Health check up: 

Health check ups are organized periodically for the children in all the project locations. A professional medical practitioner conducts routine check up of the beneficiaries.

The Education on Wheels Project by Deepalaya is innovatively changing the life of many underprivileged and would continue to do so in order to provide the Right to Education to every Child in the Indian Society.