Visit to PPES

02 August 2015

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For the past two and a half months, I’ve taught health education to the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 11th graders here at PPES. At first it was a real challenge trying to communicate with them without me speaking Hindi and without them speaking English, and for the first few weeks of my stay, I was always on the lookout for another teacher to translate for me during class. After about a month, I began pushing through all the classes without a translator, and while it was painful at times, it ended up being really fun. Every time we understood each other, the entire class would get excited and we’d celebrate by doing a cheer that involved us miming animals ranging from lions to peacocks (with none of us truly knowing how to mime a peacock). 

If there’s one thing all the students desire from the volunteers that come to PPES, it’s for us to dance for them. If I had a rupee for all the times a student interrupted a lesson or randomly said, “Ma’am, please, dance. No ma’am, dance.” I would be a rich girl. For the times we would dance together and I would wow them with my superb dance skills (the sprinkler, running man, and lawn mower) they would laugh and join along, except for that one time a 6th grader wrinkled her nose at me and said “Ma’am…no.” Though it’s safe to say the Macarena is a huge hit with ALL the students. It’s also cool to see the imprint past volunteers left on them, particularly with their English. Many 11th graders love the opportunity to say “I’m awesome!” instead of “I’m good” (thanks, Mikey) and are eager to learn new words (I supplied them with “splendid”). One of my favorites was when I went to my 7th B class and one of the girls told me my hair was “Messy hair, don’t care” – not sure which volunteer taught her that but I laughed pretty hard. All the students are always really well kept, with their hair tamed and braided, and I always tend to have messy, yesterday’s ponytail-hair. Which leads me to one of my favorite things about teaching here – taking advantage of their incredible braiding skills and letting them braid my hair almost daily. It was a win/win for all of us; having your hair braided is awesome, and they always had fun doing it. 

The students at PPES are absolutely amazing. They are beautiful, intelligent, inspiring, and eager to learn. They are your typical pre-teens and teenagers and love hearing about America and other places that are different from India. They’re also incredibly forgiving of how horrid I am at pronouncing anything in Hindi, and for that, I am forever grateful.






-by Cate Green
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PPES: Tapping the Largest Untapped Reservoir of Talent in the World

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I have been working at the Delhi office of Pardada Pardadi Educational Society (PPES) for about three weeks now. PPES is a Non-Governmental Organization that focuses on female well-being in Anupshahr, Uttar Pradesh, a state in northern India. They work to improve the lives of girls/women in many ways, most prominently through education, health & hygiene awareness, community development, and economic empowerment.
Girls at Assemby
PPES runs four separate schools for girls aged Kindergarten to Grade 12; nearly 1,400 girls attend these schools. They learn everything from Math to English to Human Rights to Computer Literacy. This is very important in an area like Anupshahr where illiteracy is especially prevalent, especially for girls. Unfortunately, girls are not always valued enough by their families to be sent to school. PPES is working to change that paradigm by providing these schools to girls from poor families in Anupshahr. A school like PPES allows these girls to begin to reach their full intellectual potential and their education enables them to provide for themselves personally and professionally. Many girls who attend PPES go on to college or start to work immediately upon graduation — something that would not be possible without the support of their classmates, teachers, and administrators.
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In addition to educational support, PPES provides information to the girls about Health & Hygiene. They have the girls shower and brush their teeth daily at school, while providing daily support for health with their full-time nurse and connections to doctors around the area. This is extremely important, as bad health is a severely limiting factor to learning. Beyond these things, PPES also supports community development by helping to organize Self Help Groups (SHGs) for women in the villages of Anupshahr. In these self-organized SHGs women are able to pool their resources to help everyone in the group. This is very important, because without this support women are often left to find loans at banks with exorbitant interest rates. Within their SHGs they can loan to each other at low interest and add the collected interest to the pooled resources of the entire group. PPES also provides information and training to community members about best practices for their cattle. Beyond these initiatives, PPES strives for economic empowerment of girls through optional vocational training after Grade 10, which allows the girls to enter the labor force immediately upon graduation.
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I’m predominantly working on administrative tasks at the Delhi office, which is about three hours west of Anupshahr. I’ve done things such as helping to write annual/monthly reports, creating documents, researching grant opportunities, writing drafts for grant applications, and posting to social media. I love this work because it allows me to help the Delhi office with their work, which is integral to the success of PPES. I also had the opportunity to visit the schools last week. It was nice to see the facilities, but it was incredible to see the girls that are benefiting from the work of PPES. They were all smiles throughout the entire time I was there and were happy to be at school. It was amazing how similar they are to girls in the U.S. — they laugh, smile, gossip, and play sports in exactly the same way as girls in the U.S. My main job was to take photographs while at the school, but I took a break to play football (soccer) with the girls during their break time. It was honestly some of the most fun I’ve had in a very long time.
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In the next five weeks at PPES I hope to continue to work on many different things in the Delhi office, and I am looking forward to visiting the girls in Anupshahr and playing more football.

-by brandongoestoindia on July 21, 2015
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Playing Football

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On Wednesday I was finally able to go to the school run by Pardada Pardadi Educational Society (the NGO I’m working for) in Anupshahr. It was amazing to see the girls and the work they are doing, as well as getting out of the Delhi office to see the school firsthand. 
It’s about a 3 hour drive from Delhi, so we arrived in the middle of the school day, at about 11 am. My friend, and coworker, Shruti showed me around the entire campus – I saw the classrooms, the computer lab, the vocational training rooms, the cafeteria, the playground, and met some girls. By the time we had finished our tour it was break time for some of the girls and they were playing football (the real football; not the American kind.) My job was to take pictures to post and use in pamphlets, but I really wanted to play. I asked Shruti if I could and she said, “Of course!” and then I went to the field to ask the girls if I could play- they were happy to have me!
It was an absolute blast! It was so much fun to do something with the girls that I love doing in the United States. It reminded me of all the time I spent playing during recess when I was in elementary school, which are definitely some of my fondest memories.IMG_0834 They helped me feel like a kid again and I’m very grateful for that. It really helped show me how similar the interests of these girls are to young children who go to school in the U.S.
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Pardada Pardadi Education Society, Anupshahr Visit

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PPES – Part II
While school at Anupshahar for girls is the flagship venture of PPES, their initiatives are not limited to girls’ education. PPES has expanded their sphere of activities to bring about a change in the lives of women in this area. Changes in mindset are more difficult to achieve, need socio-economic changes and gender empowerment and PPES is attempting to do the same.
I witnessed PPES’s work in two areas: improving the cattle resources and making the women self-reliant through self-help groups.
My familiarization started by meeting a family who were helped to increase milk yield of their buffalo through better feed, healthcare and artificial insemination. The result – increase in milk yield by around 5 litres a day! The young lady in-charge of the house was pleased with the additional income. She is planning to repair/expand her house using the additional cash flow.
PPES has a team of veterinary advisors named ‘Pashu Mitra’ who visit each house to advise the buffalo owner how this key resource could be taken care better to improve their livelihood. A large number of families in this area have buffaloes as the key household asset and milk selling is a major source of income to take care of day-to-day expenses. By and large, most veterinary care professionals happen to be male for taking care of large animals like a buffalo requires courage and bodily strength but PPES has encouraged women participation and has two lady Pashu Mitras in its team who are doing a good job.
I was impressed to observe the trust and relationship that the Pashu Mitra team has built with the villagers – mostly females. Their advice and counsel is sought and respected.
It was shocking as well as saddening to see that most menfolk in villages were idling or spending their time in playing cards or other similar activities while women took care of house and buffaloes.
On the other hand, it was heartening to see that the villages we visited had pucca roads and cleaner than most parts of Delhi – a shining example that India as well as Bharat can be clean. Apparently, a good Pradhan focussed on the development of village makes a difference.
Next stop was the meeting of a self-help group. One of the challenges is to get 10 women members who can contribute regularly to join the group. This group has 8 members and they are trying hard to get two more. In the last about 18+ months, the group had saved more than Rs 30,000/- in its kitty, a part of which which is loaned back to some of its members.
PPES has managed to organize 1000+ women in the self-help groups and next step is to get them bank loans so that they can start some small ventures.
It was interesting how PPES team members have convinced the ladies to form these groups, get into a habit of saving money, enhance their self-confidence and make them economically self-reliant.
PPES is doing social engineering to steadily change the status of women in society in and around Anupshahar.
Last activity of the day was a review session ‘chaired’ by Renuka. Chaired is wrong word here for she was standing and the group was squatting on the floor. It was amazing to see the commitment of each group member to what they were trying to achieve and their pride and a strong sense of satisfaction with their achievements.
Renuka runs the meetings in a democratic manner, letting each group leader set their targets as well as priorities. She intervenes only when needed.
I saw second line of leadership emerging and becoming stronger through greater empowerment and ownership. It was interesting to see ‘people development’ in action.
-by Ulhasmita on July 18, 2015
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Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao

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What does a name like Pardada Pardadi Educational Society (PPES) evoke in your mind? When I heard it for the first time, I thought it is an initiative to educate very old people! PPES operates from Anupshahar, also called Chhoti Kashi, near Bulandshahar in UP, a place flanked by rivers the Ganga and the Yamuna. The nickname is apparently due to similarity in terms of ‘ghats’ on the river Ganga.
Coming back to PPES, I visited Anupshahar with Renuka, an energetic, soft-spoken lady who runs PPES. The town and nearby villages were lovely in the month of July. Greenery everywhere! PPES runs a school, started 15 years back, exclusively for girls and now has 1000+ enrolled students from pre-school to 12th.
Girls in Anupshahar have come a long way thanks to PPES. It is a town known for crime and girls’ education used to get zero priority. Most girls would drop out of school after primary classes to help out at home. 27 girls who successfully completed 12th in 2015 from PPES, are either pursuing further education or have started working. It is indeed a heartening achievement! Girls in Anupshahar now look forward to become police officers, lawyers, teachers, doctors, nurses and what not!
My interaction with girls of 11th class proved that these girls were as curious, confident and ambitious as any girl I have come across from in Delhi. Each of them has set a clear goal for herself. Career counseling and personality development programmes at PPES have made a huge difference in aspirations of these girls.
Sam Singh – the founder of PPES, has leveraged his network in US to gain support from volunteers and donors. PPES attracts volunteers from US who help in training the students and teachers and also runs an exchange programme. It was amazing to meet Shivani, an alumna of PPES, who had recently come back from USA after a three-month exchange programme. Her poise and confidence should stand her in good stead and help her achieve her career dreams in hospitality industry.
The most vibrant part of the school is its pre-primary and primary section. Colourful walls full of paintings, posters & buntings along with bubbly, cheerful and naughty kids make this part of school lively and full of joy.
At the end of the visit, came the icing on the cake. Literally speaking, the school bakery was baking puffs and biscuits and its aroma, it was yumm! I promised Renuka that I would spend a night next time I visit Anupshahar cleverly concealing the fact that I wanted to properly sample the wares offered by its bakery!
While PM Modi has rightly focused on ‘Beti’, Sam Singh’s dreams of Beti Padhao to ensure that daughters grow as self-dependent, confident individuals with high self-esteem have made a clear and significant difference to the girls in Anupshahar. PPES has indeed done path-breaking work in this area.
 - by Ulhasmita on July 10, 2015
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