The Society for Door Step Schools (DSS)

Supported by: Wipro Cares

Society for Door Step Schools (DSS)

About the organization

The Society for Door Step Schools (DSS) aims to bring education to the doorstep of children from marginalized backgrounds such as construction site workers, temporary and permanent slum dwellers, pavement dwellers, and seasonal migrants like brick-kiln workers. It has been working since 1989 in the urban contexts of Mumbai. Since 1993, it has also started working in Pune. Through its community and school intervention programs, DSS has been trying to address three key issues of primary education.

It is noted that children from afore communities face: (i) non-enrolment, (ii) wastage, and (iii) stagnation.  The children never reach school because of a lack of awareness in parents and overall apathy. Even if enrolled, they are irregular and drop out of school due to multiple reasons. This irregularity eventually leads to lower learning levels, or stagnation, and children falling out of mainstream education.

DSS aims to be an instrumental force that brings development to children and works with a mission of bridging the educational gaps in favor of the urban poor using innovative programs that will bring education to these children and help them make the transition to literacy and a brighter future.

Location

Geographically, DSS programs cover the metro cities of Mumbai and Pune and surrounding semi-urban areas. Through project networking and nurturing, DSS works with different migrant communities in other districts of Maharashtra (including Ahmednagar, Alibaug, Amravati, Beed, Kolhapur, Latur, Nandurbar, and Solapur) in collaboration with other organizations working towards social causes and volunteer groups.

Program updates

DSS has launched various community and school intervention programs over the years to work towards the goal of primary education for all children up to 14 years of age while working with multiple stakeholders. These programs aim at:

• Creating awareness among different stakeholders for the inclusion of children from migrant communities in mainstream education.
• Preparing children for school by increasing their interest and working on improving their learning levels both at the community and school levels by providing them with different learning resources.
• Working with parents to increase their participation in their children’s education and learning process so that children continue their learning despite migration.
• Working with schools and education departments so that the children and the parents face no challenges in the enrolment process.
• Collaborating with various volunteer groups and NGOs to exchange best practices and extend support to more children and communities in need of intervention.

We thank the Wipro Foundation for supporting the Parents’ Participation in Children’s Education (PPCE) program in the Chikhali and Moshi-Balajinagar areas of Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation in Maharashtra. It’s a three-year community intervention program that focuses on strengthening parents to increase their awareness and participation in their children’s education. As part of the program, we recognize that parents are the major stakeholders in the education of children). Every year has a specific area of focus that includes working with parents to raise awareness, promoting active participation, and taking responsibility/ownership. We started teaching children and supporting parents during FY 2021-22 to help overcome the learning losses caused by COVID-19 school closures. We continued this effort in FY 2022-23 as well.

We successfully tackled the challenges thrown by Covid-19 at us. We launched Project Phoenix to work on learning losses of children from marginalized backgrounds. The project is continuing eve as we have aligned the same with the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) policy endorsed by the NIPUN Bharat initiative advocated by the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020. Throughout our journey, we have firmly believed and learned from experience. We believe that collaborating and coordinating with other organizations and government agencies is crucial to ensure access to quality education and sustained learning for every child. Different programs and initiatives launched by DSS focus on the same.

Some projects are now already part of the new entity. During this transition period, we encountered some challenges as expected, but we were able to successfully navigate through them.

Plan of action

Our focus for the next three years will be on:

• Expanding our reach by implementing the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) and parents participation program modules in more locations through collaboration with NGOs and social organizations.
• Aligning our programs and teaching methodologies with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020
• Optimizing our operations by automating processes, apart from streamlining human resources and fundraising processes.
• Identifying and grooming the second-line management along with program realignment with organizational goals.