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A golden GOAL Living in the ‘moment’ Breaking silences By the people, for the people An InspirED goal Have an idea? Your options are Unltd Building blocks for the future
 
A golden GOAL

A golden GOAL

Naz Foundation empowers underprivileged girls through the sport of netball By Neil Maheshwari The ground at Abhinav Gyan Mandir in Trombay looks dusty and forgotten most of the time. But, twice a week – between 10 am and noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays – a curious exercise takes place here: A group of pre-teen and [...]

Living in the ‘moment’

Living in the ‘moment’

NGO Kshana organises events for the underprivileged, for the sheer fun of it By Shahid Judge The Shanti Avedna Ashram in Bandra (W) is usually a quiet refuge, as a hospice for advanced and terminally ill cancer patients needs to be. But Sunday, May 29, 2011, was different. Thirty-four children, along with their parents and [...]

Breaking silences

Breaking silences

Pooja Taparia and her NGO, Arpan, spread awareness to prevent child sexual abuse and help survivors reclaim their lives By Aditi Seshadri A chance viewing of a play changed the course of Pooja Taparia’s life. It was 2003, and Pooja came out of Lillette Dubey’s 30 Days of September, moved by the trauma of child [...]

By the people, for the people

By the people, for the people

Community media are empowering the poor with a voice to tell their stories By Aditi Seshadri It’s an unusual sight, even for a local railway station: Scores of children sitting patiently in line, outside Bandra station, wearing black headbands, holding up posters and signs that say ‘Kab tak sahte rahenge hum?’ (Till when will we [...]

An InspirED goal

An InspirED goal

The ambitious InspirED education conference kicks off on August 27, Friday. Organised with the aim of focusing on innovative approaches in the classroom, the conference will draw together hundreds of India’s teachers from around the country. Mumbai Action caught up with Vandana Goyal, CEO of Akanksha Foundation, one of the key organisations behind the event [...]

Have an idea? Your options are Unltd

Have an idea? Your options are Unltd

“If you are passionate and have a good idea, the money and resources will come.” Pooja Warrier speaks with enviable conviction. It probably stems from the fact that, in the past few years, she’s been the one providing the means for a number of passionate people to launch their great ideas. Pooja, 29, is director [...]

Building blocks for the future

Building blocks for the future

Mumbai Mobile Creches gives kids of migrant construction workers food, shelter and a chance to learn It’s a common sight in Mumbai. Towering structures covered by scaffolding and swarming with workers, lifting, pounding, carrying, building. This skyscraper, located on a large tract of what used to be mill land in Agripada, is no different. But [...]

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Slumdogs, Millionaires

27 February 2013

Thanks to Mumbai’s land reform act, the very rich and very poor have become next-door neighbours India’s tallest buildings, the missile-shaped Imperial Towers, rise up through the smoggy haze of the nation’s financial capital, Mumbai, like a shimmering vision of Oz. The most dramatic view of the towers comes from gazing at them down Falkland [...]

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NGOs for equitable budget

27 February 2013

NGOs — the National Alliance for People’s Movements (NAPM) and the People’s Budget Initiative (PBI) — have called for changes in the budgeting system of central and state governments that would ensure equitable allocations for all sections of the society. They have said that there is a need of a progressive fiscal policy in the [...]

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Fractured Identities

27 February 2013

As you climb the rickety wooden stairs of Simplex building at Grant Road (East), amid smells of food, sweat, dust, urine and cosmetics, you pass pimps and stout madams seated on wooden stools outside the worn doors of closet-sized rooms. This 70-year-old, three-storey structure is one of the oldest prostitution hubs in the city. Inside [...]

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Child sex abuse victims often humiliated: NGO

27 February 2013

An international NGO slammed the Indian government on Thursday for the grossly inadequate protection and humiliating treatment of child victims of sexual assault in the country. In an 82-page report, ‘Breaking the Silence: Child Sexual Abuse in India‘, Human Rights Watch said most of these victims face humiliation during medical tests and often have to [...]

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New glances

Visit Mumbai Smiles and learn something new

24 January 2013

Mumbai Smiles is an international non-profit organisation that works with underprivileged communities living in the slums of Mumbai. The challenge is to rebuild a society, and Mumbai Smiles has constructed innovative and sustainable projects to tackle various development challenges — promoting livelihoods for income-generation and poverty alleviation, education projects to eradicate illiteracy, and health campaigns [...]

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Widening gap between rich and poor threatens to swallow us all

24 January 2013

Leaders meeting in Davos must take concrete action to reverse rising inequality – and finally put the poorest 99% first As we enter another year of global uncertainty, government and business leaders are heading to the World Economic Forum in Davos as its own Global Risk report (pdf) identifies growing inequality for the second year as one [...]

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Urban agriculture helps combat hunger in India’s slums

24 January 2013

In 2010, nearly 830 million people around the world lived in slums, up from 777 million in the year 2000,according to the United Nations. The New York Times describes Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, as a “cliché of Indian misery,” with approximately 1 million slum dwellers living on 8 percent of the land in the western city of [...]

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Ashoka Changemaker creates leaders in Mumbai slum

24 January 2013

In 2008, Aarti Naik had dropped out of 10th grade at her Bombay Municipal Corporation school in Mulund West, Mumbai, and faced a bleak future of a lifetime as a servant. “My family condition was very poor,” Naik told India-West by telephone from Mumbai. “My BMC class was one teacher with 18 students and I [...]

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Urban poor ghettoised: NGO

Urban poor ghettoised: NGO

26 December 2012

To understand land use pattern in the city, NGO Yuva conducted a study titled ‘Ground Truthing’ in the P/North ward Malad (West), with a population of 9.58 lakh, to assess the results of the development plan (DP). Conducted in October, the study provides an understanding of land use reservation and implementation in the city in [...]

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NGO demands closure of Kanjurmarg dumping site

26 December 2012

Citing unhygienic disposal of waste as the reason, Vanashakti, a non-government organisation, on Monday, filed a public interest litigation demanding the closure of the Kanjurmarg dumping ground. Disposing of waste on the landfill site is in direct violation of the coastal regulation zone notification of 2011 and the Municipal Solid Waste rules, 2000, the petition [...]

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Slum children's education

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BOMBAY, INDIA (NOVIEMBRE-DICIEMBRE 2005) FOTO FRANCESC MELCION BOMBAY, INDIA (NOVIEMBRE-DICIEMBRE 2005) FOTO FRANCESC MELCION BOMBAY, INDIA (NOVIEMBRE-DICIEMBRE 2005) FOTO FRANCESC MELCION BOMBAY, INDIA (NOVIEMBRE-DICIEMBRE 2005) FOTO FRANCESC MELCION Palani amma, Golibar slum, Khar * FAIZA AHMAD KHAN Mumbai Mobile Creches, Agripada Centre BOMBAY, INDIA (NOVIEMBRE-DICIEMBRE 2005) FOTO FRANCESC MELCION BOMBAY, INDIA (NOVIEMBRE-DICIEMBRE 2005) FOTO FRANCESC MELCION Sangharsh nagar, Khar * FAIZA AHMAD KHAN BOMBAY, INDIA (NOVIEMBRE-DICIEMBRE 2005) FOTO FRANCESC MELCION

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