Note: This is a featured article by Be a Bridge for Change – BBC to discuss UNSDG 8, ‘Decent Work and Economic Growth’.
A brief overview of what Pardada Pardadi Educational Society (PPES) does and what PPES stands for.
PPES Vision: To facilitate the creation of a socially and economically empowered model for rural development.
PPES Mission: Rural Development through education, employment and empowerment of rural girls and women.
The PPES has been working towards this goal for the past 20 years, and sharing some thoughts and insights on the challenges that PPES has faced. Initially, the PPES started out as a small school with only 50 students, but over the last decade or so, PPES has expanded its sphere of work and developed three other programmes, all focusing on achieving the PPES mission.
PPES now runs four programmes with a different focus:
School: PPES provides free education, three meals a day, free transportation, vaccinations, school books and uniforms to over 1,600 girl students. Today, PPES has 118 girls enrolled in higher education and 94 girls working across the world.
Community Development Division (CDD): Through the PPES-CDD programme, the PPES has set up over 500+ SHGs with over 5,500 women members. The PPES assists them with best farming practices and health and hygiene training. It also helps them set up bank accounts. This is key as the PPES helps them learn micro finance and inter-loaning options amongst themselves in order to get out from underneath the grip of loans.
Economic Empowerment: The PPES set up IVillage to work as a job creation and development programme. The PPES employs rural women in its production unit, where they learn skills such as hand and machine embroidery, business development leads, sales and marketing.
Health and hygiene: The PPES has an onsite surgery with a nurse who works six days a week. Initially, this facility was only used by the student, but as the PPES grew, it spotted that there was a need for basic medical treatment for the wider community and so, the Prana health centre was opened to all. The PPES has a group of doctors that comes and runs clinics on a weekly basis for more serious conditions. The PPES has now developed its mobile medical van, which travels to the local villages delivering treatments to those who can’t attend to the clinic itself.
About the author: The author is Pardada Pardadi Educational Society (PPES). You can find their work here.