Description
FFLV was initiated in the 1990's to provide food and education to those who go without these necessities due to poverty. FFLV also works towards environment regeneration and to reduce discriminatory social practices, especially those practices that negatively affect women and children. FFLV provides these services to the people of Vrindavan township and surrounding villages.
FFLV provides primary and secondary school education to over 800 underpriviledged children. The organization runs two schools, one primary school and one secondary school. It also provides councelling and encouragement to parents to send their children to school and provides practical support to make this possible such as income support.
Many impoverished and illiterate families who do not understand the importance of education, especially for girls. FFLV social work outreach team goes to rural areas to promote the importance of educating women, encourage pregnancy health care, promote small families and provides and supervises over 90 microcredit groups, mainly made up of village women.
FFLV runs its schools under the name "Sandipani Muni Schools (SMS). These schools not only provide education but also complete medical care for the children and their families, free uniforms, shoes and other clothing, free school lunches and for the most impoverished families, food packs are distributed. The school's services also include a chldren's home where children whose parents cannot care for them can stay either temporarily or permanently.
SMS is a basis for many of the society's outreach activities. On the school grounds, free evening meals are provided to 400 slum dwellers every night. Vocational training and literacy coursed for adults are also run at the school (such as sewing courses and early education, teacher training courses). The school also runs a workshop where 12 local women are employed to sew school uniforms for the school children. These women previously little chance of employment but were trained at SMS for nine months in sewing and numeracy.
FFLV gives schoolchildren the chance to help others and learn a spirit of volunteerism so SMS children serve meals to their peers at lunchtime and to slum children in the evening. SMS schools work towards the preservation of local and Indian culture and rituals so the children are given the opportunity to perform classical dances, songs and dramas enacting India's historical and cultural heritage.
FFLV plants several hundred trees per year and employs 14 people to clean the streets of Vrindavan. Waste that would otherwise become fly-ridden, be left on the street or wash into the nearby river Yamuna, is collected and disposed of responsibly. Organic waste is composted and used on the organization's organic farm.
FFLV takes steps to ensure social change through its "Girls Fund", which provides an incentive for parents not to get their girls married until they are 18 and have finished studying at SMS school. SMS promotes gender equality by mostly enrolling girls in the school, especially where the girls are from a family where the boys are sent to school however the girls miss out.
FFLV has a broad range of activities because it wishes to work towards a model society, which it sees as including things such as environmentally sustainable living, non discriminatory social practices, education for all and a good standard of medical care for all.
