Mr. T K Mathew about projects with impacts

The various projects are all directed to the emancipation of the poor. And when we say that we believe in empowerment, capacity building and social transformation, the whole process of empowerment is through education, involvement and participation.So the weaker section of society has to be animated and organized so that they become partners in business rather partners in development.

Without that participatory we won’t gain anything. The impact we make is - ‘we impact change’. Every person who gets in touch with Deepalaya should change. Change educationally, socially, culturally. In other words they should build their own capacities through the process of our intervention and that is what we are looking for. And we have enough of results during the past thirty years of young people getting employed, getting out of the slums, getting into positions which is at par with any other citizens of the country whether they are well to do or rich or coming from a different background. So that kind of an emancipating approach which has facilitated large number of young people, we have educated over 50,000 children and their families and communities are linked to it. So we see the change not only in the child, but also in the family and a community. We always talk about the continua of child family and community, so that it has a very long range effect on the community.

Speaking of examples of our impacts there is a Neha Khanna, who’s father owns a tea shop. Neha is now a senior executive in a corporate institution and getting a salary of may be Rs. 30,000/- . Eight former Deepalaya students have come to teach in Deepalaya formal schools. There are four girls who have become nurses already, some have become engineers. So with reference to cases there are I would say there are hundreds. We have documented quite a few of them for our publication. They are in 2 volumes, one is ‘celebrating children’ and another is ‘impacting life’.