The Story of India

India

India was doing tutoring of pre-k to high school students. They also held health care clinics when funds were available and provided micro finance support by giving sewing and tailoring classes and teaching small business finance to the adults. Stella Rani, the founder, and director of Unnati Ki Rah lives right in the slum village with her husband and college age son. 

Stella was an elementary teacher and just felt the call by God to do something more than just work in a public school. She spent countless hours doing prayer walks through the village long before starting the center. She saw the helplessness of the many migrant workers who were flocking to Delhi in hopes of a better life and ended up finding almost unbearable poverty. The adults were off working as brick layers all day, fathers, and mothers both, and the little children were being tended by siblings barely able to care for themselves. Most were not getting any education. 

Stella asked her church family if they would support her idea of starting a nongovernment organization (NGO, is a nonprofit in other countries). They agreed and created a board and jumped through the many difficult hoops in India to gain their government approval paperwork. I know full well the difficulty of dealing with the Indian government. It took over three years and a mountain of paperwork to finalize the adoption of our daughter Sheena.

Stella knew she would focus on education with her background. She also knew that the parents needed other social work supports and she set out to do whatever she needed to get children registered in the local schools, offer daily tutoring to help them and supplied training and assistance to the parents.

Unnati Ki Rah served about 40 students and families before the BBI partnership. Now they are serving about 100 families. We help them maintain a nice center, with running water and electric. The space allows Stella to have tutoring classes daily, sewing classes and healthcare clinics. She can host many parent training classes there as well. She does food and clothing drives which helps the very poor families who don’t always earn enough money to feed and clothe themselves.