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ONGOING INITIATIVES

More About What We Do

  • Athi-Sundar Library Project - Based in Anganwadis - catering to local Women & Children 
  • Medha Nutrition Project - Healthy Living Options for Young Children
  • ​The Early Childhood Education Program
  • Beyond Boundaries - Boccia for Persons with Disabilities 
  • Health & Wellness 
  • Infrastructure & Child-proofing​​
  • Special Children in Special Places
  • Upskilling & Capacity Building for Women

The Athi-Sundar Library Project 

The actual beginning of all learning - libraries are where dreams begin and memories are made.
These libraries also serve as centres for Women's Wellbeing where meetings are held for young women and mothers in the community to get together every month for health and well-being workshops or general discussions on their lives.
With donations of books (with separate shelves for each age-group), our libraries are for everyone in the community to access whether a 3-year-old or an adult.
We hope that with this small initiative, every Anganwadi then becomes a hub for the local community to come and get books to read to their children or for themselves, ultimately getting them to contribute and take care of the library  themselves.
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Medha - Nutrition Project

Working towards healthy living in young children - supplementing food and nutrition at local unaided preschools.
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Medha Nutrition Project
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Cleanliness & Healthy-Living Project

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The Ashoka Tree First-Aid Boxes
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Every childhood memory is filled with laughter, running around, playing and an equal number of tears and scraped knees.

Here's the thing, if each time you hurt your knee, there was somebody to put a band-aid on it - what's the reason every other child doesn't have a band-aid available to put on her little injury?
The Ashoka Tree First-Aid Boxes contain everything from band-aids and Dettol to thermometers, pediatric paracetamol and nasal saline.

There's nothing on the planet that says she has to wait with a burning forehead till her mother comes to pick her up later in the day. 
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We aim to ensure every un-aided play school has a basic first-aid kit to take care of every little scrape and clear every little blocked nose.

The Early Childhood Education Program

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The Ashoka Tree - Stationery & Art Kit
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Going to school is something we've all taken for granted.  What if you considered for a moment the number of children who don't qualify for school based on the fact that they can't spell their names out, based on the fact that their parents can't afford to pay for private schools, based on the fact they were sent to a play-school for the free meal it provides.

The Ashoka Tree aims to ensure every unaided play school has the infrastructure and facilities that are good enough for the 20-25 children aged between 2-6 who go here everyday.  
We ensure there are basic fans and tube lights, we ensure there is child-proofing (so cooking gas and stoves are not balanced on planks of wood where children run around and play), we ensure the child has toys to play with and is not being asked to sleep on the floor all day till a parent comes in the evening, we ensure there is a toilet so we don't have children using the outdoors instead.   
It's the least we can hope to achieve, but not something we can do without help.  
Do get in touch with us if you'd like to be the change you wish to see in the world.  

Infrastructure & Child Proofing

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The Anti - Mosquito Effect
​Living in areas where mosquitoes are a menace is bad enough.  Having to spend all day in a play-school where there's nothing you can do about it, is worse.  The Ashoka Tree works at mosquito-proofing unaided play schools to essentially minimize instances of dengue, malaria, chikungunya, filariasis, yellow fever and more.  One mosquito prevented from entering that room is one child saved. 
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The BlackBoard Project
​The Ashoka Tree aims to ensure every child in every play-school, aided or unaided, has a blackboard to draw on.  
Affordability and continuity is the key here - after all a box of chalk costs a mere quarter of a box of pencils.
We work with  volunteers and school children from bigger schools with larger dreams who want to make a change.
We  Spread More Smiles!
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The BlackBoard Project - The Ashoka Tree
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The BlackBoard Project - The Ashoka Tree
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The BlackBoard Project - The Ashoka Tree
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 One of The Ashoka Tree's BlackBoard initiatives with volunteers and children from Global Public School, Cochin.
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The Vegetable Garden Project
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The team at The Ashoka Tree helps every unaided play school set up their own little vegetable patch where there is space (plants in grow-bags where there is none).

​Not only does each child have a fresh batch of healthy vegetables to eat at lunch every other day, but this also gives them the joy of watching these plants grow as they look after their vegetable patch every day.



Special Children in Special Places 

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The Ashoka Tree works with Father Tezza's School, Wynad, and the St. Camillus Training Centre for Mentally Challenged, Kannur. With over 108 special children, the  oldest 'child' here is 46 years old.  
Most of these 'children' (especially the older ones) have been abandoned when they were younger, although now more stringent rules are in place that requires parents to visit their children at least once annually.
About a dozen of these children are orphans but not up for adoption, simply because nobody wants to adopt a special child.
The Ashoka Tree contributes to monthly rations here and is always on the look out for more donors to contribute to the daily functioning and growth of these children.  We send them toys, have contributed to establishing and training fairly competitive volley-ball and basket-ball teams.  Our children eventually made it to the 'All Kerala Special School Volley Ball Finals'. 
From toiletries to sanitary pads and adult diapers, from basic rice to eggs and fish, from cycles and tricycles to play with to fuel for the school jeep, there's a continuous need every day.  


Run The World - An UpCycling Initiative

The Ashoka Tree, works with unemployed mothers, women from the Mahila Mandiram and unaided play school teachers who need an income to make life a little easier.  
These are women who have worked tirelessly from day one to get where they are today. 
Working with newspaper, bottles, cloth and plastic, we're on the path to sustainable lifestyle products from generally unused material.
'Run The World' aims at giving these lovely ladies a voice through their art – a chance to do something they enjoy, and yet make a profitable business for themselves. 
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Run The World - An Upcycling Initiative - Sale
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Run The World
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Run The World
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Run The World

 

ALL Pictures are from our ongoing initiatives with unaided play schools, orphanages and special schools across South India"

[email protected]
​+91 94469 15587

The Ashoka Tree is a registered charitable trust with CSR1, 12A & 80G certification from the Income Tax Department of the Government of India 
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Photo from dominiqs
  • The Ashoka Tree
  • PROJECTS
  • Our Partners
  • What We Do
  • The Team
  • Helping Hands
  • Get involved
    • Volunteer
    • Donate
  • Research
  • Donate