Sadhana Village, A voluntary organization working on an innovative project for the care and rehabilitation of mentally challenged adults

A Community that Cares!

Sadhana Village is a throbbing intentional community in the heart of Kolwan valley, 30 kms off Pune City.
It is an ever evolving community responsive to the needs of the disabled and the under- privileged; assisting, promoting, implementing solutions based on freedom, dignity and trust of the individual ;and respect for environment.

Sadhana Centre for Adults with Special Needs: (Special Friends)

Sadhana Village started its work in 1994 with a residential care centre for adults with mental challenges. In a decade and half the centre has established new standards of care for such adults with special needs. We call them our Special Friends. They live in spacious houses with modern amenities. There are Housemothers, coworkers and volunteers who live with them and attend to their needs. There is a quality of life imbued with personal freedom, self-respect and creative occupations.
People and organizations interested in such projects come to visit Sadhana to learn the innovative methods that it has developed.

Rural Families around us:

While interacting with the indigenous families around us in the valley and with local workers who came to assist us in our work, we were made aware of the tremendous rural problems faced by the families. We have consequently been involved seriously with the poor and the underprivileged around us. The rural infrastructure was in shambles; the small number of the rural rich exploited others through `Funds`: a financial system that charged 5% interest per month on loans given to the poor. Though there was water for farming there were hardly any community lift irrigation schemes. School education left much to be desired and the able-bodied simply deserted the villages in search of petty jobs in Pune and Mumbai.

We made a thorough study of the economic situation and began our interventions: we constructed water conservation dams on the river Walki; helped community lift irrigation schemes; assisted families construct family toilets. Helped establish women Self Help Groups (SHG).;trained women in economic activities; conducted awareness camps for drinking water in the villages etc.

Empowerment:

Sadhana believes in individual and collective entrepreneurship; at the same time it also believes that an enabling environment is essential for such flowering of the initiatives. Hence, it has been focusing on awareness building, training and broadening of horizons. SHG meetings see women discussing more about their rights as members of Panchayat; more about the evils of domestic violence and how to rear children holistically, than saving money and taking small loans. Some of the victims of domestic violence have been given collective women support with Sadhana providing them seed capital to start economic activities.We have helplines for women in distress.


Child Sponsorship Project: (CSP)

To get more intimately into the households of the poor, we have been implementing a project called Child Sponsorship Project. A school kid from the poor family is chosen by a sponsor who assists us financially to provide for the educational needs of the child. Our social worker focuses now on the wellbeing of the entire family as it forms the immediate environment for the sponsored child. Health care, insurance and a host of other benefits are given to the families.

Supportive Education:

Village schools are not adequately equipped to do justice to children`s education. We have students who remain untouched by education even after years attending schools. For such students, we have started our supportive education Project. Through this project we give to the primary school students extra coaching in school subjects; extra-curricular camps to help them better understand their physical, social and human environment; some of these students come from the Kaatkari community in the valley.

New Initiatives:

We want to provide more creative workshops for our Special Friends like bamboo crafts,pottery ;as also provide art therapies for them like music and playacting.

Educated rural youth find little chance of landing deserving jobs. Though they have academic achievements they cannot compete with their urban counterparts for lack of soft skills like effective communication, interview techniques and personal presentation and basic English competence. We are planning a Residential Finishing School for such candidates from resource- scarce families.

There is a great need for computer literacy for the rural youth. Owing to certain infrastructural problems, schools have not been able to do much for their students. We plan to set up a Computer Training Centre to train girls and boys from the villages.

We plan to set up a Service Centre for 3300+ rural families around us in the valley; the centre is designed to cover comprehensive infrastructural services to these families within a distance of 10kms radius.

Sadhana`s Finances:

Sadhana receives no grants from the government. The families of our Special Friends share expenses of the Centre . For a few who are unable to share, some generous individuals and corporates have come forward to assist us. Sadhana has been helped by organizations from India and abroad for its capital expenditure. We are grateful to all these for their unstinted help to us.

We need YOUR help:

Both for running our current projects as well as starting the new ones proposed, Sadhana needs your valuable help. Your assistance to Sadhana will be a wise social investment for future. You could help us provide new therapies to our Special Friends or help needy children realize their educational dreams or assist rural families to be less uncertain of their daily bread..

We`d like to invite you to visit us at your early convenience.

Sadhana Village is registered under Societies Registration Act 1860 as also under Bombay Public Act of 1950. Its FCRA registration is current and it is registered with the Income Tax department. And has 80G certificate.

Cotact Us:

Address: Sadhana Village, 1,Priyankit Aptts, Lokmanya Colony, Paud Road, Opp. Vanaz, Pune –411038 India.Phones: +91 20 2538 0792 / 1112
adm@sadhana-village.org ; sadhanavill@gmail.com http://www.sadhana-village.org/