The Hari Prasad Shastri Charitable Trust have generously been supporting Karuna since 2016 and are currently supporting two essential projects helping children to access education.
The Natun Diganta project supports 400 girls in the extremely poor Namkhana district of West Bengal, India to stay in school, protecting them from child marriage. Rates of early marriage are high in this area, and girls are often taken out of school early. By organising the girls into groups and counselling the parents, we help to keep the girls in school meaning they are educated and protected. The Hari Prasad Shastri Charitable Trust have been supporting this project since it started in 2021 and have already supported an entire cohort of girls to complete school.
From this year we are also receiving support for a second project, working to educate 500 children from Nomadic and Denotified Tribes in Maharashtra, India. These children come from families which face the stigma of criminality and live on the margins of society. Through this project, parents are helped to understand the importance of education and children are enrolled in school and given extra support. Significantly, thanks to this project we are seeing girls from these tribes complete school for the first time.
