UPAY

UPAY
Formation 2010 (2010)
Type Non-governmental organization
Purpose Education
Headquarters Nagpur
Location
  • Maharashtra, U.P. India
Chairmen
 Varun Shrivastava
Volunteers
120
Website upay.org.in

UPAY (उपाय) or Under Privileged Advancement by Youth, is a Non-governmental organization.It works towards the provision of quality education to the underprivileged children in India.it was Founded by Varun Shrivastava, An IIT Kharagpur Graduate[1] with the help of his young Engineer friends on 20 May 2010. It was registered as a NGO on 19.09.2011.Its success story can be gauged by the mere fact that where children were unable to do basic arithmetic calculations are now, not just producing excellent academic results but also bringing laurels to these underprivileged areas.[2] Children who could barely dream about secondary school education are now pursuing and feeling confident in attaining for higher education. From three members and one center having 20 children in the year 2010, it has blossomed into a Registered NGO of 17 centers having 1200 children, spread across two states i.e. Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. The numbers are increasing every day.

History

The foundation of development for every society is the education of its youth. Keeping this in mind, an NGO UPAY (Underprivileged Advancement by Youth),[3] was founded in May 2010 by a group of young engineers from a small village called Kumbhari in outskirts of Nagpur. Its main aim is to provide opportunities to underprivileged children and bring smiles on the dejected faces. Since its inception, the UPAY Team has been working whole heartedly in achieving this aim.

Projects

Reach & Teach

gurgaon footpathshala

UPAY was established to provide a SOLUTION to the everlasting problem of rural education. It is working on developing a sustainable process of imparting knowledge to these underprivileged children. We teach as well as imbibe our children with the spirit of UPAY. These children are further carrying this responsibility of upliftment of society. So these children are not just the students of UPAY but they are also the harbingers and volunteers of UPAY who are spreading its cause across the country. Right now, it has 11 centres having 1100 children.

Footpath Shala[4]

pune swar gate footpathshala

In cities like Nagpur, people living on the footpath are doing some unkilled labor or literally begging for their bread & butter are some of them.There are people in the society who don’t have any planning for their future, who are struggling against poverty, malnutrition, unhealthiness, family planning.[5] UPAY has taken initiative to replace begging bowls with books for street children in 5 centers ( MaharajBagh, LIC Square,yaswant Stadium,Mount Road, Santra market) in Nagpur and total 98 children are enrolled at footpathshala. 20% street children are enrolled in schools. Regular classes are being conducted with great participation. around 58 street children are enrolled at these center. It is an open pathshala, similar to Rabindranath Tagore`s concept of open schools. Classes are being taken by UPAY volunteers at Footpath only.

Apnasaamaan.com

Apart from educating the children, UPAY is also working on how to make these underprivileged areas economically independent. UPAY is targeting to tap the local skills and plans to develop small scale industries. Besides seasonal agricultural income, villagers should have perineal source of income and development. For this, a small development is introduction of an online portal,”apnasaaman.com”.On this the local products developed by the villagers are available for sale. So that apart from the weekly village markets and limited customer base now their produce are getting exposure to a wide network.

Grath on Rath

We believe that if children can't reach to school, school must reach to them. with that concept UPAY has started an initiative" Footpathshala" for street children of Nagpur city by starting an open school at footpath . our volunteers go to footpaths of city where street children beg and live. we have started teaching them there only. This initiative has been very successful and at present we are operating at 5 locations with more than 100 street children coming to our open school. but developing a school infra structure at footpath was very much challenging so we have started a mobile school with mobile library, which is having all the necessary thing for running the Footpathshala . as there is no power supply at footpaths, we keep a battery run lights, projectors, TV for showing videos etc.

GRANTH ON RATH is a mobile library for recycling the old books to the Under-privileged students from affluent students and bridge the rural urban divide.

Books are provided to the under privileged students at a very nominal rent. We work as a medium providing the flow of books from rich students to needy & poor student .

Every student has some set of books that are no more useful for them, those books can be used by some other student depending on the requirement. We will collect all those useless books from students and in return we will give books of their use on nominal rent of 20% of actual cost. At the same time we can Improve Incomes of villagers by providing employment opportunities to rural women for recycling and maintenance of books because to handle such quantum of books we need few workers who can collect, segregate and distribute the books.

A small maintenance of the books will increase their life and same book can be useful for 2-3 students. Along with the books we will also collect the used notebooks; in the end of every note book we can find some unused pages which can be used for making a new notebook which could be sold on nominal price to generate some revenue. Waste and unused papers/books can be used for making paper.

References

[6]

  1. ↑ "From IIT to teaching slum children – the story of Varun Shrivastava's UPAY". 2015-11-28. Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  2. ↑ "Success-Story of UPAY: Educare of Underpriviledged". www.nagpurtoday.in. Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  3. ↑ "Ek UPAY, a solution". 2013-07-21. Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  4. ↑ "UPAY aiming to replace begging bowls with books through footpath shala - Times of India". Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  5. ↑ "Not the story you want to read on Independence Day - Times of India". Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  6. ↑ "आखिर क्या है वो ‘उपाय’ जो बदल रहा है गरीब बच्चों की जिंदगियां", IndiaMantra.com, 2016-10-12
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