Growing Futures

The Challenge

Families who migrate from Pakistan into the desert terrain of Jaisalmer and Bikaner lose more than homes — they lose routine, identity, and, for their children, structured schooling. Beyond the classroom gap, UJAS found women with limited access to reproductive health information, almost no sanitation knowledge, digital literacy that was a distant aspiration, and parents who wanted to help their children but didn’t know how.

Our Response

Backed by the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF), UJAS runs schools across five regions of Jaisalmer. The flagship location was refurbished and staffed with teachers trained in empathy-based pedagogy and trauma-sensitive classroom methods. Around it, a wider programme took shape:

• WASH training across eight schools, with a UJAS-trained Hygiene Assistant running handwashing demonstrations and distributing over 156 soap bars — handwashing adoption rose from roughly a quarter of families to three-quarters within the year.
• Menstrual health awareness in five schools, breaking a long-standing taboo through visual education and peer stories, and distributing more than 220 sanitary pads to students and families.
• Digital literacy sessions reaching 55 students and 27 parents — many encountering a keyboard for the first time — followed by parents using WhatsApp to track school updates and even checking weather forecasts online for their farm work.
• Career counselling, drawing 52–60 students and families to an event that put professions like nursing, engineering, and teaching in front of children for the first time — reframing what a future could look like beyond manual labour.
• Teacher training in modern classroom strategies, parent–teacher engagement sessions, daily nutritional supplements for 50–55 children, and a tree-planting drive of 50 saplings, each one named and adopted by a student.

Outcomes

Tracked through attendance logs, distribution counts, and monthly reviews, the programme’s first year saw school attendance climb from a 60% average to 85%, handwashing adoption from 25% to 75%, and digital literacy from 10% to 70% of those reached. As of July 2025, a new academic session is underway building directly on this base — hygiene kits replenished, digital literacy expanding toward mobile technology, and a second plantation drive planned.