What we Do
Health
High maternal and infant mortality rates, limited healthcare access in rural areas, and widespread malnutrition, collectively hinder the well-being and survival of mothers and children. URMUL Setu Sansthan, along with the partnership with PLAN India, trained and supported village-based healthcare activists who regularly monitored the health and nutrition of the infants and lactating mothers. The consistent interventions brought a sustainable impact in villages in Bikaner district.
Education
With a view to provide an opportunity to drop out girls and who have never been to school owing to social, economic or other reasons, Urmul initiated six-month’s residential Balika Shivirs (Girls’ Education Camp) in 1998 in collaboration with Lok Jumbish. Urmul also collaborated with Shiksha Karmi Yojana and facilitated in establishing, and rejuvenating and managing dysfunctional government schools in rural areas, and also supported in thus enabling children of the area to pursue their primary education. 👇🏽
USS conducted residential education camps, enabling women and girls to pursue higher education, by overcoming the barriers of unpaid household chores and agricultural labour, as well as the lack of schools and transport facilities.
To encourage and foster holistic development of the students, the organization trained and supported teachers in 1429 government schools (in 4 blocks of Bikaner District) to assess their academic and non-academic skills, thereby promoting inclusive education) in conducting the Continuous Comprehensive Evaluations of the students throughout the academic year.
Currently USS has been running village-based education camps, supporting school dropped-out women and girls to access secondary education through open schooling. Currently we are also advocating to Rajasthan State Open School to make open schooling accessible, considering the geographical barriers in the region.
Livelihood
Urmul trained local people as weavers to supplement their income by helping them produce goods for the local & export markets. It trained farmers on practicing agriculture and animal husbandry utilizing improved farming techniques in collaboration with Agricultural University.
Child Protection
Children’s well-being has been central focus to all our interventions. Through its initiatives of ‘GARV Pariyojana’, we significantly influenced the norm of son-preference, in Sri Ganganagar District which was one of the districts with lower sex ratio. For years USS also supported the administration in addressing children’s emergencies through partnering with Childline India.
Currently, we are engaging with adolescent girls and boys from schools in tehsils in Bikaner. The children are helped with Social Emotional Learning, enabling them to deal with their emotions and navigate life with healthy relations with the people around.
Women Empowerment
Urmul Setu has been working on women empowerment for past many years and has been instrumental in forming and strengthening self-help groups and adolescent girls/young women groups who are currently engaged in savings and credit activities, income generation and entrepreneurship activities. These girls and young women are not only earning money and are supporting their families but have also earned respect in the society.
Apart from helping women and girls access educational and vocational opportunities, USS organized community-based groups i.e. ‘Kishori Prerana Manch’ of adolescent girls.