Enriching Communities, Changing Lives
We connect human hearts in the USA to human needs in rural India.
About LinkagePada
Our Vision
Children and youth are the future of India. Women empowered with education will lead the way to positive change. LinkagePADA and PADA elevates the Dalits, the lowest in the historic Hindu caste system, through education, opportunity, and encouragement. Envision an enlightened India where everyone can excel, prosper and thrive. .
Our Approach
PADA, People's Action for Development Alternatives Since its formation in the 1980s, has been committed to the principles of bottom-up community organizing.
The linkage between USA & India
PADA is a registered Indian non-profit. LinkagePADA is the tax-exempt US nonprofit that raises funds to support PADA. All US expenses including travel are donated, so 100% of US raised funds go to PADA.
About LinkagePADA
Our Mission
Yes to healthy babies & moms. Yes to children's stimulated minds. Yes to trained conflict mediators. Yes to mothers trained in sewing. Yes for community organizing for bottom-up development.. Yes for empowered women.
Our Programs
Our programs serve over 40 rural Dalit villages by providing: evening tutoring for school children; nutrition and prenatal health training for first time mothers; a 400 hour sewing program; training in conflict mediation; and, empowerment gatherings for elected women village leaders.
Our Impact
In 2023: Over 800 children received that "extra bump" for academic achievement. Fifty-one women graduated from our sewing program. Thirty purchased machines. Ninety-eight healthy babies/ were born in our prenatal nutrition program. Legal empowerment provided two villages with public schools. Fourteen villages began conflict resolution training. Since 2018 our Mothers-To-Be program enabled 679 mothers to have healthy babies, without a single maternal or infant death.
Moments of Hope: Our Journey in Photos
Moments of Hope: Our Journey in Photos
Study Centers...evening tutoring
There is a huge underclass--called "Dalits"--in India, numbering millions. Their children struggle to excel in a caste-biased public school system. Often, even the most gifted and motivated don't achieve due to the crushing grind of their daily existence.
Our Study Centers--which operate for two hours, six evenings a week during the 10 month school year--were created to address this problem. Located in more than 20 villages, each Center provides a place for children ages 5 to 15 to tackle homework, do drill and practice exercises, and get help from a tutor as needed. Our tutors have either a high school or college degree and are selected and supervised by an adjunct professional educator. We open Study Centers where the village elders request it. We ask parents to "skin-in" and PADA picks up the rest of the cost.
At the beginning of the 2023-24 school year, 816 children were enrolled in this program.
Mothers-to-Be
Prenatal & Maternal programing for first-time mothers.
Miscarriages, stunted growth, maternal deaths and other horrors challenge our young mothers. The causes are many, but on the top of the list are lack of knowledge, poor nutrition and low utilization of public health services. This program address all three by: 1.) Teaching first-time mothers what is meant by "good nutrition." 2.) Introducing and encouraging first-time mothers to utilize free government nutrition and prenatal health programs. 3.) Monitoring and facilitating the use of these programs.
This knowledge and encouragement comes through weekly support groups, led by our trained facilitators. Mothers-To-Be can relax and talk freely in this intimate setting, knowing they are sharing their worries and concerns with a knowledgeable, trained woman. The result is a woman better prepared for birthing her child and, once born, caring for it with greater confidence and skill.
Sister circle & MTB secrets
“Sister Circle Power...a Mothers-To-Be secret!” The educational aspects of nutrition and prenatal medical issues are not delivered in the traditional educational model; rather, they are injected into a powerful social bond of young women experiencing the commonality of pregnancy. To fully understand the power of this social group, one needs to understand the “pregnancy” culture in rural India for first-time birth: After marriage and becoming pregnant, young MTBs move from their home village to the village and family of the husband, where they remain until giving birth. So, these young women are thrust into a new, alien village without familiar social bonds to experience the momentous experience of pregnancy and birth. The “sister circle” of these young women in the privacy of weekly group meetings gives the MTB a confidential peer group….free of imposing mother-in-law isolation and often antiquated superstitious ideas. To this powerful new bond of sisters our paid group facilitator imparts the wisdom that makes for heathy babies and healthy moms.
Baby Blessing & Sutra Every sister circle meeting opens with the group chanting or singing this sutra sung in Telugu, the native language which has both cadence and rhyme:
I will give my baby and my body good nutrition.
I will go to my health checkups and maintain good hygiene.
I will share my worries, fears and have positive thinking with my sisters.
The circle closes with the sutra plus this ritual of resting a hand on their unborn: and repeating:
My dear baby you are a gift for me by God. I trust your health, happiness, and safety.”
Sewing Training Program
Our sewing program serves young and disabled women. Many of the younger women were pulled out of schools as children to work and help sustain their parents' households. Now married with children, both they and the disabled women are eager to learn skills that translate into more income and increased social status.
What makes this possible is the fact we move the program to six new villages each year--thereby bringing the training to them. This enables the women to fulfill their daily child and household responsibilities while simultaneously learning a vital new skill. Training consists of 400-hours during the fallow season when employment is scarce. Students learn to operate a treadle sewing machine to make clothes for their families and others for pay.
At the completion of the course, students wishing to purchase a machine receive a LINKAGEPADA grant for 25% of a new machine. In addition each graduate receives a certificate she can take to the bank and qualify for a small business loan for the remaining cost of a new machine.
Started in 2018 we now have 166 graduates and we have distributed 117 sewing machines.
Remember Teddy
Remember Teddy….in our Fall Update we shared the vision of donor Shirley. Could our sewing graduates make stuffed toys for a possible cottage industry plus a gift for their own children? It is unknown whether Teddy can become a cottage industry, but our sewing teachers who gathered for Teddy 101 have shouted an affirming “Yes” along with their children.
For our new donors, each summer our 400 hour traveling sewing program goes to 6 new villages. Women use this program primarily for sewing for their own extended families plus extra income sewing for neighbors. This summer there were 51 graduates. With their graduation certificate a local bank extends a loan for a machine purchase. PADA gifts each graduate a down payment valued at 25% of a machine purchase. A new treadle machine sells for $115.
Legal Assistance - Conflict Resolution - Paralegal
PADA is about empowerment: children, women, villages.
Empowerment occasionally requires an extra hand. PADA is there to help when a woman is being denied access, through no fault of her own, to public programs or justice in the courts. Upon occasion a whole village needs assistance to gain entitled services.
PADA in recent time has assisted villages to obtain public schools and land grants for village formation and residential housing.
PADA sponsors workshops for village conflict negotiators, paralegals and for village leaders needing knowledge of basic processes and legal rights.
In 2017 through PADA's legal assistance, a "thatch squatter's village" on a swamp was given: legal status, 400 masonry homes, plus elevated land and paved streets.. In 2022 a village was provided a constitutionally mandated public school. In 2023 another village was granted a bridge, road and school as a result of PADA's empowerment.
Every donation makes a difference
Donations & Details
Mail your check to: LinkagePADA 7400 Holly Ave., Takoma Park, MD 20912.
Contact our Headquarters: Major Donors and inquiries please write or email us at LinkagePADA, PO Box 441, 376 Black Twig, Linden, VA 22642 Email: msmeck@msn.com or linkagepada@gmail.om
- LinkagePADA is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Federal EIN: 88-3447365.
