Udaan Team – Anju Verma                                                                                                                                                   
My venture was started at my school in 2014 when I was 12 years old. In my school, there were some girls whose homework was never completed. Due to which they got punishment from teachers every day. One day I asked them about this. They explained that their parents make them work so much that they never had enough time to complete the homework. Whenever they open their books, their parents would shout at them and say, “Who will complete the household work”??  
 With the thought, I decided to discuss this problem with my friends but they didn’t show much enthusiasm. I learned that creating change and bringing people together is not possible in a single day, I decided to go again to my friends and explain that we could have very easily been in the same situation and so we must solve the problem.              
After making them understand, we decided to go to these girl’s homes but the response was not positive. If we leave these problems for someone else to solve then there would never be any social change and we all decided that even if we don't succeed right away we will not give up.                
We realized if we want to make real change in the mindset of people that we also need to include other adults and influential people in our efforts. With this in mind, we worked to get the interest from the children’s protection committee in my village, where sarpanch, Anganwadi worker, leader of Literate women members etc.  
We took them all back to the same place in Dhanayo. When the parents saw the Sarpanch and many respected people in the village had come to convince them about the importance of their daughter’s education, they began to understand the importance of Education.                  
The parents pledged that they would encourage their daughters to study rather than forcing them to focus on the household chores. They also agreed to give their children time to study.  After the incident, I decided that I would never let any child be the victim of child labour.
 
Komal Hath Kalam Ke Sath -  Support a Child 
There was one family who lost everything several years back. Her father died in her childhood so her family's basic needs were not full-filling at that time. Her family tried to survive that situation but after two years her bother also died. Her family lost all the hope due to that incident. When they moved out of that community they lost all the roots from that place and the community also started ignoring about their fate. Her mother tried hard to survive her family with available food.
Day by day the situation became worst. When our UDAAN team visited and understood the whole story of that family, we promise them to give help. But they were not ready to accept that because they were having some consequences with this kind of activities. They had an experienced from some other organization that came to offer them help but didn’t keep their promise. Because of that experience they were not ready to take support from UDAAN team. But when our team did home visits with the stakeholders we were able to gain their trust.
One day we went to that girl’s school with the basic materials for her education. The time when I saw the smile on her face all my efforts got paid off. UDAAN also support that girl to learn well and fulfils her basic necessities.
She said, “this team increased my belief and trust in people who are helping each other’s, who are taking care of vulnerable students for education". UDAAN gave her a smile to make a better life. Now her mother watches us as we came into their life like a god. This kind of support can increase the confidence of our team to do more work.