Women Empowerment

Mahila Panchayat

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Sofia Educational & Welfare Society has been running Mahila Panchayat Programme for last 8 years in Old Mustafabad and & Brahmpuri areas of North-East District of Delhi. The programme is supported by Delhi Commission for Women, Govt. of Delhi. The program works with a belief that legal awareness and collectivising women in the form of Mahila Panchayats is a major step for women empowerment. These Mahila Panchayats offer crisis management and legal aid services. The program also works towards the reduction of violence against women. Under Mahila Panchayat Project, women are selected from within the community and trained in different laws around women, process of handling a case and counselling women in distress. This program aims to stop violence against women through awareness generation and positive action while changing values and attitudes of our society.

It is really a community-based program for women and helping them to live their life with pride and dignity. Sofia is helping and making the victim women in North East district of Delhi self-dependent, self-reliant by providing skill development training and helping them to find a job. The process makes them economically independent and enables them to support their families. Thousands of women have been trained and placed on jobs or helped to start their own businesses.

The team of Mahila Panchayat are having four Paralegal counsellors and one coordinator who are trained in different laws pertaining to women, working under Mahila Panchayat at Sofia. They handle the cases and provide counselling under the guidance of Sofia and Delhi Commission for Women.

The location i.e. Old Mustafabad & Brahmpuri. Mahila Panchayats has been successfully functioning under Sofia as a collective approach towards community participation in dispute redressal. The members of these Panchayats are provided trainings aimed at making them legally aware. Mahila Panchayat’s are established to resolve the cases of maintenance, bigamy, domestic violence, alcoholism etc. at the community level. If the cases do not get resolved at the Mahila Panchayat level, alternative course of action is taken under the supervision of the NGO or DCW representatives.

Sofia has also organized many camps, street plays and awareness programs for sensitising the community and encouraging them to fight against the evil of the society such as female infanticide, foeticide, sexual discrimination, gender inequality, reluctance towards girl education resulting in high percentage of illiteracy, dowry system, restrictions at home etc.

These camps have provided a space for women to register complaints if they face any kind of issues.

Crises Intervention Centre (CIC)

The Crisis Intervention Cell (CIC), North East District was given to Sofia NGO in month of November, 2019. It’s main purpose to provide assistance to rape victims. Under this project, we appointed counsellors who meet the rape victims and their family members and provide assistance in terms of counselling, filing FIR, facing trials in the court, free legal service etc. Besides these assistances, the Cell also acts as a co-ordinating agency for services like, medical, mental health, shelter and financial assistance to the victims with the help of a network of  NGOs. 

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Women Literacy Classes

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Sofia’s Lucknow Center, arranges education for those women who for some reason could not study earlier or had left their studies. In this way, they are being given a chance to study again through their studies. Duration of the Course 6 Months. A total Numbers of 15-15 Women are enrolled for the tuition classes in Two Batches. The Tuition classes for basic Shiksha are holding regular  test of the student to enhance their understanding level and we make sure all the guidelines of WHO regarding the pandemic in which we aware students about social distancing and caring mask.

Distribution of Hygiene Kits

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Sofia Educational and Welfare Society has been working with (BYPL) BSES Yamuna Power Limited since 2015 in 14 divisions in North East district, East District, Central District. This year, Sofia proposed BYPL for hygiene kit distribution keeping in view of outbreak of Covid 19 pandemic. Hence, BSES and NGO SOFIA took an initiative“COVID-19 RELIEF EFFORT”- free distribution of hygiene supplies in order to under serve families during pandemic time. NGO-SOFIA delivered necessary items to the needy population of North and North-East Delhi. As part of this helping drive, first Sofia NGO conducted community survey to identify needy people for sanitation kit distribution and approached BSES. On the request of Sofia NGO, BSES took over the responsibility and extend their support to

distribute sanitation kits to needy people. The kit for distribution consisted of essential  hygiene items like tooth brush(4), toothpaste tubes(1), detergent bar(2), soaps(2), mask(4) and sanitary pads(3) to make sure that basic hygiene will be achieved. The handmade masks were made by women and girls who had pursued a stitching course from NGO-SOFIA for the distribution in the community. 4250 Hygiene kits were distributed to the needy people on below mention dates along with 16500 handmade cloth masks (4 masks in each kit). Under this initiatives, we especially provided 250 hygiene kits for the 250 residents of the  Mother Teresa Home, Nand Nagri.

Training of Self Defense

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Self-defense is a very important skill for woman, which every woman should have. After a little research, it was found that women who know this skill of self-defense, whenever there is an attack, they are not afraid of it. Because she already knows how to fight them in this situation. Sofia conduct Self Defense Training for young girls and women to empower them for Self Security in every 3rd Month at Sofia’s all Centre.

Self Help Group

Sofia is having 4 Self Help Groups with 40 members each in our Lucknow centre. In these groups, we are empower them to full fill their basic needs and emergency expenses. We also conduct special hand holding and Skill development training programs for members to ensure effective results.
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Special Legal Aid Clinics for Women

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With the support of Delhi State Legal Service Authority, Sofia is running Legal Aid Clinic for women in Old Mustafabad and Yamuna Vihar area where women can register their complaints and get free legal advice. Apart from this, We also provide free advocates to every women who want to file case in courts,  these advocates represent our beneficiaries in respective courts free of cost.

Sofia Smart Centre

Tech Mahindra Foundation in association with Sofia NGO established “SOFIA SMART CENTER” especially designed for Domestic Violence Survivors, Widow and single mother.   Under this initiative, we train women in Fashion Designing & Professional Cooking with the requisite employability skills through a structured training program, ensuring that they are placed in suitable dignified jobs or become Entrepreneur.  Beside skill training, we are also providing value added service to ensure holistic development of our trainees through organizing stress management & motivation sessions, Health Camps, Legal awareness camp and many more.

Training on Fashion Designing

Duration of the Courses is 6 Months. The training includes theory and practical classes along with Exposure visits and Guest Lectures. The content of course curriculum includes stitching, cutting, drafting, sketching, designing of dresses, Art & craft, Tie & Die, Hand Embroidery, use of waste material,`  basic machine repairing and maintenance and many more. 

Training on Professional Cooking

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Duration of the Courses is 6 Months. The training includes theory and practical classes along with Exposure visits and Guest Lectures. The content of course curriculum includes Indian, Chinese, Italian, Continental, South Indian, Bakery Items, Serving & Presentation skills, portion size measure guidelines and many more. Apart from course curriculum, we took classes for personality development, grooming classes, Basic professional etiquettes and courtesy etc to prepare them for job market or start business models.
During financial year 2020-21, we trained 120 trainees in Fashion Designing and Professional Cooking. Out of 120 trainees, approx. 82 placed and 15 students opted for further higher studies.

With support from Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited (TPDDL) Sofia has started Vocational Training Centre cum tutorial centre in Inderlok and Shahbad Dairy New Delhi and Lucknow. The focus of this centre is to serve community on different issues with special emphasis on employability.

In these centres vocational trainings are being provided on cutting and stitching, computers, accounting etc. Tutorial classes are also provided to the students from weaker section of the society. TPDDL has provided the space in its Substation premises with all equipment, tools for this project. Sofia provides training to more than 400 students annually with a target to place more than 70 percent students who complete the trainings.

This project has great potential to deliver at societal as well as economic levels. Sofia enrols youth from 18 to 25 years of age in vocational training and children between the age of 6 to 13 years for tutorial classes and women who attained age of 35 and more for Women Literacy Classes.

Save the Girl Child Program

Sofia Education & Welfare Society is conducting Save the Girl Child Program in the North East District of Delhi. The program aims to change family and community’s attitude towards both the girl child and their mother. Gender Imbalance is becoming a grave problem in India. When a girl child is born, she is discriminated among male members of her family. The discrimination among two different genders is one of the most serious difficulties in a woman life. Many families kill the female child; some are killed in the womb, some at the time of birth, some die due to ill health. Only a small number of girl child born are able to survive. Sex selective abortions, female feticide and infanticides are very common in our society. She is always considered less in the male dominating society of our country.

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Sofia Education & Welfare Society spreads awareness among the community members by conducting awareness camp, street plays and community meetings. Under this program, Sofia facilitates awareness, education, heath check-ups, nutrition etc.

Sofia Education & Welfare Society celebrated International Women’s Day on 8th March 2021 at Sofia Education & Welfare Society’s Head Office to spread awareness among the masses about the Importance of Girl Child and Women Empowerment. Sofia’s President, Suhail Khan is a Member in the Delhi State Inspection & monitoring under the PC & PNDT Act and also an advisory member of the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT), North East district of Delhi, since last 5 years. Sofia Education & Welfare Society organized rallies on Save the Girl Child in the area with the help of local dispensaries in coordination with local NGOs and area RWA to make the rally more effective and meaningful.

Health Camps & Health Clinic

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Sofia Education & Welfare Society runs an OPD at Mustafabad, North East Delhi, on the 2nd& 4th Friday of every month. A gynaecologist is also available for the female patients. Health camp for women of all ages and children are organises once in two months. These camps are visited by 350-400 patients. Free medicines with the help of Directorate of Health Services (DHS), Govt. of Delhi is provided to the patients. Awareness camps for the mother and child are being regularly organized by Sofia Education & Welfare Society. In these camps, women are counselled to take preventive measures to maintain the intake of nutritional food. Pregnant women are counselled to take the periodical medical check-up to monitor the growth of the baby.

General Health Awareness Meetings have been running regularly and nearly 20- 30 women visits on daily basis to this activity. Sofia conducts follow ups for all the women and children undergoing treatment.

The aim of these medical camps is to create awareness, identify the patients’ problems and helping them get the treatment at an affordable cost. Sofia also facilitates the patients in getting hospital care at subsidized rates to those patients who need additional treatment. In the FY 2020-21, more than 4800 people benefitted from these health camps.