PRAYAS Chandur Bazar
This organization has already been registered
Someone in your organization has already registered and setup an account. would you like to join their team?Profile owner : a*****i@g***l.c*m
Mission Statement
PRAYAS is a NGO, having the sole agenda of “helping individuals & organizations in finding out their own agenda”. We play a catalytic role in the development of “Change Makers”. We act as a hub by connecting different sectors of society. We work in informal approach; proactively offer a hand holding support, necessary mentoring & nurturing Eco system for potential change makers. We are not activity driven, but we are involved in different social activities like environment, health, education, child & youth development, disaster management at different levels & roles. We could develop a strong network of volunteers & well wishers in almost all districts of Maharashtra. So we can easily create an initial base at most places for a variety of social causes & speed up the social change process. We have done it for the issue of Farmer suicides in Vidarbha region a few years back & about the drought situation in Jalna district two years before. This year we could do it at Yavatmal regarding water scarcity.
About This Cause
With all these strengths we also have evolved some very unique, universal, cost-effective, replicable social tools by continuous R & D process. These are very much useful for vision building, developing holistic & long term perspective about life, rational thinking & problem solving attitude & overall life enrichment. We have built up our activities on these tools at our own & we also train others. PRAYAS is founded by Dr. Avinash Saoji, who had decided what not to do in his life, before completion of MBBS from Govt. Medical College, Nagpur in 1982-83. He decided not to use his knowledge for making money, but for the benefit of the needy. He worked for nearly 10 years with another NGO, in rural & tribal area of Amravati district, before the foundation of ‘PRAYAS' in 1994. PRAYAS works for & try to connect both the extremes of society, whose sufferings are because of either scarcity or excess of resources, they owe. Malnutrition & Obesity is one such example & we work for both the issues. Both sectors need to come together & work for mutual enrichment for solving their own problems. We work towards making a necessary attitudinal change of both these segments by exposing, training, mentoring & helping them in finding out their Meaning of Life, by way of various activities. Mission Deep Nilona, Yavatmal : Nilona dam is the major source of water supply to 3 Lacs population of Yavatmal city. There is scarcity of water supply during summer & the city gets water once in every 3-4 days. PRAYAS is organizing monthly motivational program in “Amhi BiGhadalo” in Yavatmal also, since last 17 months. Out of this regular activity, a core group of 30-40 sensitized citizens get evolved. They are mainly highly busy professionals from different background. During the process this group had taken up the issue of water scarcity, they studied the issue, met with govt. officials, collected the data, have lengthy discussions with different groups, visited the dam site & decided to take up this issue. During Manson only they started doing Shramadan & planted trees, repaired 2 bandharas. De-silting of Nilona dam was undertaken & actual work started on 13 th April 2015. It was continued for next 63 days. Yavatmal citizens have collected around 15 Lacs of Rs. as donations for this work. More than 12000 citizens visited/made Shramadan during this period at the worksite, which was 12 kms away from city. It just became a pilgrimage like center during those days. Nearly 40-50 PRAYAS volunteers have devoted 3 to 12 hours a day for complete duration of 63 days, which was the great contribution. Nearly 35000 tractor trolleys silt was removed & given to farmers free of cost for using it as manure in their farms. This has created a very much positive atmosphere in the whole city. This became a role model of social sensitization, voluntarism & collective action for everyone. Now the group has undertaken another task of making city completely plastic free. Holistic Health Awareness Program : PRAYAS is known for its work in Health awareness by way of teaching Art of Holistic Living. The uniqueness of this program is that of converting the scientific knowledge in simple, non-technical, ‘easy to understand & apply’ format, in day to day living by anybody. We have conducted more than 800 awareness programs & 100 + workshops (1-2 day’s training programs) in almost every corner of Maharashtra & also in few other states. Initial few programs were organized by us & afterwards others invite us & we deliver the content. We could reach out & being instrumental in making healthier lifestyle in nearly 150 thousand families so far. Thereby we have prevented lots of heart attacks & angioplasties / bypass surgeries & other diseases & sufferings also. School & College Awareness Programs : We are working for the primary prevention & inculcating healthy habits since childhood & younger ages. For that we had been to 4000 + schools / colleges, interacting with about 5 Lacs students & 50000 teachers till now & make them aware regarding healthy & good living habits, like developing healthy food habits, doing regular exercise & yoga, remain free from addiction, reading books, living with morals & values, academic excellence etc. Life Skills Training : We also have trained the school & college students in the life skills management principles, which are otherwise taught only in management schools or to the professionals. We have successfully developed these training modules, relevant, easy to understand language & could reach out to the around three Lacs of rural, tribal, urban children & youths. We have conducted from 2 hours awareness program, to 1-2 days fully residential programs for them at different places. We observed that even a single interaction triggers the chain of personality change & transformation in many of them. Vision-2040 : This is a powerful & life changing vision building exercise for personal life enrichment, which we have developed from the “India - Vision 2020” concept of Ex President of India Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. We have used it for more than 50000 school children, youths, parents, and professionals, rural & urban groups with the same effect. This gives clarity regarding both short & long term life goals, priorities in life, etc. They develop a road map of “Where I will be after 20 years in my life & what I need to do right from today to reach to that level”. We observed that this long term perspective is very much needed & almost missing in Indian context. Sevankur : After working for 12-15 years in rural & tribal area at the grass root level, PRAYAS has added the focus of motivating youths for such kind of humanitarian work. It started & facilitates Sevankur, which is a unique open platform, for those who want to live differently & also wants to make a difference in other’s lives. Sevankur is known for the informal & homely approach, lifetime bonding, relationship on equal footing, a place to nurture the dreams of the youths. Sevankur had organized 18 residential motivational youth camps in different regions of Maharashtra, with 5000 youths participating voluntarily. We have a close relationship with many of them. About 25 youths have opted social field as the life time career & 10-12 of them have already started their social ventures. 100 Idols from different sectors of society came over in Sevankur camps to share their life journey with the participants. Sevankur has emerged as a qualitative brand in youth activities & also as the connecting platform for the existing youth networks at least in Maharashtra state. Sevankur is building a cadre of motivated youths working for social change by various exposure & training activities. Sevankur Little Champs : This is a powerful therapeutic tool evolved after lots of R & D, to act as mass therapy for the generalized depression, frustration seen in all sectors of the community, in spite of having many virtues. We have identified children from different areas of the state, who have made some remarkable achievements in spite of all kinds of physical / social / economical disabilities & challenges. It’s a 3-4 hours stage show, where these children narrate their own inspiring stories of struggle & achievements. We have organized these stage shows in 18 cities of 11 different districts with an average audience of 3000-5000, during last three years. This program is relevant & equally appealing to all the three generations, to persons from all socioeconomic backgrounds. About 20 persons had directly reported that they have canceled the plans of making suicides, by listening / seeing these Inspiring Little Champs. “If they can live happily with so much of difficulties & challenges then why can’t we ?” is the strong message this program communicates. It acts as a mass therapy for generalized depression & frustrations. It also helped many people to find out their meaning of life. Many came forward to help & support such children. Facilitating new social startups: PRAYAS is supporting new social startups, started by 10-12 Sevankur fellows at different places, by mobilizing financial & other resources for their work. We are continuing with them in every respect & expect to see them as effective social organizations in coming days in fields like helping destitute children, environment, alternate health, livelihood, tribal issues, youth development etc. Santosh Garaje of Gevrai, Dist. Beed is one such example. Now he is just 29 years old, belongs to a migrant sugarcane labor family background. He started “Sahara Parivar” for the destitute children, when he was just 18. He started with 4 such children on his own. He was a part of Sevankur Camp four years before for the first time. He was struggling to meet out the daily needs of his children. After being a part of Sevankur family, the support started coming in the form of donations, volunteers, skills. Now he could shift the children from a small rented house to a specious newly built house on the 3 acres of donated land. The no. of children has increased to 35. He is now able to devote time for the holistic development of the children, which was not possible in initial stages. This is the difference Sevankur can make. Now he became an Idol for the youths. Support groups : PRAYAS facilitates the support groups to offer emotional support for sufferings from conditions like alcoholism, Cancer, Vitiligo, Families hit by sudden death like accidents & suicides, single parents etc. We are trying to spread this concept of support groups all over through our network. This concept hardly exists today except the metro cities. Educational Sponsorship, Earn & Learn Program : PRAYAS started working with about 12 schools of Amravati city on regular basis, where majority children are from poor slum dwellers. We are trying to improve the quality of education by motivating the children, teachers, school management & the community by enlarge. We are We are also supporting the deserving students by providing sponsorship, support classes, computer literacy & other developmental training.