Army Navy Air Force Wives Activity Trust (ANAWA)

Supported by: Wipro Cares

About ANAWA Trust

ANAWA Trust is a not-for-profit organization in the field of education since 1994. The target beneficiaries are the children of families with low income, migrant daily wageworkers, petty vendors, domestic help, rickshaw pullers and the like. Running classes from LKG to Class VIII, and thereafter ensuring most students leaving after Class VIII complete their Class X & XII exams through NIOS. Basic Computer education is initiated at Class V level and is imparted in the morning hours in the office-cum classroom.

ANAWA Trust is NOIDA based. Trustees of ANAWA are wives of retired service officers from the Defense, viz. Army, Navy and Air Force. Their tenure in the defense services trained them to do social work through their welfare activities wherever they were transferred. This training saw its fruition after retirement in the formation of the Trust to work for those in need, to provide assistance to victims of natural calamities, and in the early years, to also be in the forefront of the vaccination drives of polio, hepatitis, and cancer detection camps.

Projects

ANKUR School functions out of Somerville School, Sector 22 NOIDA, in the afternoon from 3.30 – 6.30 pm through most of the academic year. It follows the CBSE Syllabus and is affiliated to NIOS for Class VIII exam. The Trust employs 15 teachers, including subject teachers and a Computer teacher. WIPRO provides the teachers’ salaries for ANKUR School.

ANAWA Trust also runs a project called JAGRITI for girls aged 14 years and above, who missed the opportunity of regular schooling. Students receive basic education in Hindi, English, and Mathematics as well as Vocational Training in sewing, knitting, embroidery, art and craft, henna application and Beauty Culture. The last two are most enthusiastically followed and skills learnt are applied whenever an opportunity comes their way, including setting up their own small parlor.

Both projects are NOIDA, based in the District of Gautam Budh Nagar.
Since these activities are short-term, for a limited period, it was but natural for ANAWA Trust to identify and initiate a long-term program. Education was an urgent requirement and a natural choice, in the newly formed township of NOIDA where they were pioneer settlers. This is why the project ANKUR got initiated, mostly for the children of construction workers who swarmed this area in those early years, when the Association was established in 1989. It was a Delhi registered Association and was re-registered as ANAWA Trust in 2008, since these projects were UP-based. Even the NIOS affiliation was shifted from a Delhi registration to UP registration.

The profile of the students has not changed over the last 26 years. The thrust is still to make an impact in the lives of the financially weaker sections of society, to show them and guide them to aspire for and place them in a position to achieve the goals shown to them. That is the motivating factor passed from Trustees to teachers, to students and their parents.

Plan for the next 1-3 Years

The year 2020 forced us to face new challenges in the realm of teaching. Online classes began. Given the fact of our students’ background, the non-availability of laptops, many hours of internet availability and impossibility of holding classes on Zoom, education was initiated on WA, with teachers sending the lesson for the day and students also sending back their responses through WA. The process took all day with student responses coming in at all odd hours. This was largely because a single mobile phone was available in the family and the same would have been available to all siblings for their use. However, the process got refined over the months and a satisfactory system was evolved, beneficial to the students’ learning.

Besides academic learning, emphasis has and will continue to be given to exposure to fine arts, crafts, elocution; introducing Vocational Training, wherever possible, to enhance the learning process; and, help children face future challenges with confidence in this highly competitive world. The academic session for ANKUR School begins on 6 April. Classes will continue online until schools reopen.

We are also studying the New Education Policy (NEP) and its proposal regarding new school textbooks, the reduction and increased flexibility of the school curriculum and content in each subject. In ANKUR, we view this as a positive proposal, especially considering only three hours are available five days a week for the teaching/learning process.

In our view, the success of this policy will depend on many factors. Therefore, it will need to be implemented in phases, especially the vocational training aspect. The next three years will pose a challenge for us, but we have no doubt that together we will be able to meet them.