New Delhi, Dec 11, 2024: Aseema Charitable Trust has recently launched the book, “Aseema: A Journey Beyond Boundaries”, detailing the account of its transformative 27-year journey in empowering children from the marginalised communities through high-quality, value-based education.
The book unveils the extraordinary journey of Aseema that began at a traffic signal in Bandra, Mumbai with a group of street-dwellers who wanted a different life for their children and the woman who built Aseema – student by student, school by school.
Aseema Charitable Trust is a non-governmental organisation with a mission to equip children from marginalised communities with high quality, value based education, enabling development of their limitless potential. Over the past 27 years, Aseema has worked extensively with children living in slum communities in Mumbai and remote tribal communities in Igatpuri, Maharashtra.
Aseema’s journey began in 1995, when three friends – Dilbur Parakh, a human rights lawyer, Neela Kapadia, a documentary filmmaker and Snehal Paranjape, an advocate in the Bombay High Court – registered a public charitable trust while researching the legal aspects of child labour.
They realised that while there were many legal provisions made for children, the ground reality was very different and quite disturbing. As they met children on the streets of Bandra – a suburb in Mumbai – they understood that education was the only lasting solution. These children spent most of their day begging at traffic signals, rag picking or working at tea stalls or garages. Most of them had never been to school and the road that lay ahead of them did not hold much promise for a better future.
Inspired by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and with faith that education could help these children tap the immense potential within them, Aseema’s Education Centre was born on 15 December 1997. In a room offered by St Stanislaus High School, 18 children began their journey of education. Aseema now reaches out to about over 9,000 children, providing opportunities that are rightfully theirs.
In Mumbai, Aseema works in partnership with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) to create centres of excellence within the public education system.
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