70% of Indian Population lack proper knowledge & training in Health & Hygiene during their formative years. And it is known that the habits we develop during childhood and adolescence have a profound impact on our lives throughout. Therefore, it is important to impart good habits while the kids are growing, and train them to teach the same to others as well. It is the vision of a healthy child to a healthy Nation that gave birth to ASHA (Adolescent Student’s Health Alternative) Project.
HOW
The primary Goal of ASHA project is cultivating and facilitating good health and hygiene habits. We have been conducting weekly health classes in Govt schools for over two years, where the children learn the basics about body and mind, various physical, psychological and behavioral changes during the period of adolescence. ASHA education also provides Preventive, Holistic, Long-Term and Cost-Effective Health Alternatives empowering children to take control of their own health.
Impact Overview
0
YEARS
450
SCHOOLS
56950
CHILDREN
590
ASHA Health Teachers
Impact Overview
0
YEARS
450
SCHOOLS
56950
CHILDREN
590
ASHA Health Teachers
The Body is
the image of Mind.
~ James Allen
SAFE TOUCH - UNSAFE TOUCH
OASIS ASHA leads the way in addressing
Child Sexual Abuse
Reached to 10000 children (1st to 5th grade) and trained 550 trainers…
There are over 400 million children in India making up for over a third of the country’s population.
The government hopes to address them through its millennium development goals. But the problem is, the information module is devoid of the less talked about evils such as child sexual abuse (CSA). According to a recent survey conducted by Ministry of Women and Child Development in association with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and a few NGOs working for child’s rights, 53% of children in India face sexual abuse and in 50% of those cases, the abusers were either known to the child and within their family or school or neighborhood.
Though the issue is rampant, there are very few who want to talk about it and even fewer who admit that it could be happening to their own child. ASHA, has taken the lead in reaching the unreached and spreading awareness about Child Sexual Abuse through its ‘Safe Touch- Unsafe Touch’ workshop.
Oasis aims to increase its reach by adopting a two-pronged strategy.
Train the Trainer
Directly reach out to children.
The ‘Train the Trainer’ program is aimed at educating teachers, volunteers, youths, home makers, and professionals so they are well aware and then reach out to more people and children. Oasis volunteers and children also reach out to the children across different age groups covering private and public schools alike. Oasis has successfully conducted workshops across schools in Hosur, Denkanikottai and Anchetty in Tamil Nadu and the greater Bengaluru area in Karnataka.
The workshops have been well received as it focuses not only on differentiating Safe Touch from Unsafe Touch, but also prepares children on various ways to deal with Unsafe Touch thus encouraging them to open up and discuss it with family members or appropriate authorities as necessary.
The Toarch Bearer
Dr Neha Vakharia
• ‘Mahila Manch 2007’ Award for outstanding social contribution. Felicitated during their Golden Jubilee Celebration by Bhagini Samaj Charitable Trust, Bangalore.
• The Nav Ratan Award for exceptional contribution towards health and hygiene for the underprivileged.
Dr. Neha Vakharia is an M.B.B.S. doctor. She had joined Oasis when she was a student and she feels Oasis added important values of humanity and selfless services in her training as a doctor. She underwent serious illnesses while in college, and endured tremendous stress. She thanks Oasis for helping her in taking the illness positively and making her understand the limitations of allopathic medicines and the importance of alternative medicines.
Dr. Neha Vakharia, during the Oasis camps, used to share her dreams of serving the poor of India and other third world countries. Mother Theresa was her ideal. After completing her studies, equipped by the lofty idealism of making life more meaningful by service to humanity, she joined a private hospital at Vadodara. But she felt some guilt pinching, the biting of conscience-that she was not doing the right thing by serving the rich when poor people were so under privileged.
As part of some ‘crazy’ experiments facilitated by Oasis, she went to stay in slums for about 1 to 2 months to experience their living conditions. The experience in her words, “This exposure brought me closer to reality of millions of underprivileged people of our country. They would share with me from whatever food was in their home even if they were not sure about where the next meal would come from. I was astonished to see the greatness of their heart despite their poverty and felt ashamed of the poverty of my heart.”
It was natural for Neha to leave her job. After getting married, she shifted to Bengluru where she promptly started health service centers in the slums around her area. While working on the illnesses, she realized that many of the ailments needed intervention in their earliest stages. Thus Oasis ASHA – Adolescent Students’ Health Alternative- was founded. Today, Neha and her core team of extremely talented and dedicated women friends are taking health classes as a year round supplementary course to hundreds of students in municipal schools. ‘ASHA of Oasis’ has spread to Ahmedabad in Gujarat and is dreaming to reach more and more children in different cities in the coming years.
Swami Vivekananda’s philosophy has been lifelong inspiration for Neha- “It is only with great fortune and immense grace of God that you have got the opportunity to serve the ignorant, diseased and suffering humanity. If you dedicate yourself completely in a selfless way, you realize the unlimited power within you.”
