Yashodhan School, a Future Smiles success story

Yashodhan School is located in Shastri Nagar, a slum area in Thane. Majority of the students in this school come from the nearby slums. By making education accessible to the underprivileged students of Thane, Yashodhan school is not only trying to provide quality education to the under privileged but also contributing towards protecting their legal right to Education. The team of committed trained teachers and non teaching staff, along with the management of the school, works towards creating a better prospect for these students in future. The school also has a beneficiary committee, which aids in improving the quality of education.  In our opinion, the quality of education at any institution is integrally linked to the quality of teachers. As a result, we have now decided to sponsor the salaries of teachers and non teaching staff at Yashodhan school. There are forty four staff members including teachers and non teachers at the school. This initiative has helped in teachers’ retention and resulted in improved motivation and quality teaching. The improvement is clearly reflected in the better academic performance of students.

Further, school based administrative data suggests that girls constitute 39% of total students. This ratio is a testimony of the school’s commitment toward gender equality. Although boys outnumber girls, the school has been undertaking efforts to increase enrolment of girls in school.

Following positive outcomes have been observed as a result of our association with Yashodhan school:

• Education is now accessible to all the students in the age group of 2 to 17 years in Shastri Nagar area, without any discrimination of caste, religion, region, gender, faith and race.
• A new Parents committee has been formed. The committee aids in strengthening the relationship between parents and the staff.
• Parent’s meets are organized regularly to discuss students’ performance and progress
• The enrolment ratio is increasing every year, and the dropout ratio has been falling significantly
• Multiple students oriented activities, individual group sessions, personality development workshops, communication workshops enable students to learn new things and increase their interest in studies
• Support is provided to need based children so that they gain admission into formal school and have access to quality education

• Frequent visits by Mumbai Smiles foreign Visitors allow students to exchange their thoughts about educational system, culture etc.

Our experience with the Yashodhan school (Thane district) for the last 8+ years has resulted in many learnings and evolved best practises in building capacities of a school to achieve positive results as mentioned above. We will now move to our strategic area of Marol and Andheri east to apply these best practises in government aided schools, municipal corporation schools and private low income schools. Our endeavour in making education accessible is a tireless mission and will continue in our strategic area.