About SSFA
SSFA is indulged in the fields of Education, Vocational Training, Health and Community Development which we believe are the areas of greatest need and deserve to be the foci of our attention. We believe that these are inter-related fields and together the only way to make a sustainable and impactful difference in the beneficiary population.
We work for the upliftment of the poor and destitute by helping them achieve socio-economic independence, self-sustainability and health. We do everything from providing educational and health services to the needy, mainstreaming marginalized street children, making low-literate youth employable and empowering women. We help those in need with full respect, love and commitment, with the aim to not deliver charity but to empower them to better their own lot.
SSFA is a grassroots level NGO providing services spanning the development in areas of Education, Vocational Training, Health and Community Development and thus able to provide a comprehensive path from poverty to prosperity and fully empower the destitute to tread it successfully.
TEAM MEMBER
🧡 President – Aruna Gupta
Founder | Artist | Educator | Advocate for Women & Environment
As the founder and guiding force of our NGO, SSFA embodies creativity, compassion, and conviction. A seasoned artist with exhibitions held both in Delhi and abroad, she channels her artistic talents into meaningful social change. Her journey as a housewife and mother of two has deeply shaped her understanding of the challenges women face—and inspired her mission to uplift them.
Through hands-on workshops in arts and crafts, she empowers women and children to become self-reliant, confident, and skilled. Her work is rooted in the belief that creativity can be a catalyst for independence and dignity.
Beyond her artistic pursuits, she is a passionate advocate for women’s health, hygiene, and societal freedom. She also champions environmental awareness, promoting clean living and sustainable practices in every community initiative. Under her leadership, our organization thrives as a space where art meets purpose, and every individual is encouraged to rise.
🎨 Vice President – Anita
Artist | Philanthropist | Entrepreneur | Advocate for Children & Women
A creative soul with a generous heart, Anita brings both artistry and empathy to her role as Vice President. As a housewife, mother of two, and small business owner, she understands the power of resilience and resourcefulness. Her contributions—both personal and financial—have been instrumental in advancing our mission.
She has taught embroidery, crafts, and other skills to women and children, helping them discover new paths to self-sufficiency. Her compassion especially extends to children living in poverty, and she works tirelessly to create nurturing spaces where they can thrive.
Her leadership is grounded in kindness, and her actions reflect a deep commitment to community welfare.
💡 General Secretary – Dr. Vaibhav Bansal
Technologist | Environmental Advocate | Community Visionary
With a PhD in Computer Vision and a passion for social impact, Dr. Vaibhav Bansal brings innovation and energy to our team. He is driven by a vision to help citizens unlock their potential and contribute meaningfully to society.
He is particularly focused on environmental cleanliness, waste management, and civic responsibility. His efforts aim to foster a culture of awareness and action—where people take pride in their surroundings and their role in shaping a better future.
As General Secretary, he ensures our initiatives are both forward-thinking and grounded in real-world needs.
📚 Treasurer – Dr. Anjali Jain
Educator | Advocate for Women’s Health | Financial Steward
A dedicated academic with a PhD in Computer Science, Dr. Anjali Jain brings both expertise and empathy to her role as Treasurer. With years of teaching experience across institutions in and outside Delhi, she continues to inspire through education.
Her passion lies in promoting awareness around women’s health and hygiene—issues she believes are foundational to empowerment. She manages our financial resources with integrity and care, ensuring every contribution is used effectively to support our mission.
Her blend of academic rigor and social commitment makes her a vital pillar of our organization.
Projects
SSFA’s Mission is to empower needy children and Women to break the Vicious Cycle of Poverty where poverty spawns problems of malnourishment and mortality while lack of education ensures children follow in their parents’ footsteps scraping a daily existence as manual labor or rag pickers.
We believe the best way is by equipping the needy with health, education and employable skills so they attain socio-economic independence and become responsible citizens of society. Our several projects in Health, Education and Community Development are inter-related and together provide a once-forgotten child or community a comprehensive road from poverty to prosperity.
Education: SSFA’s Mission is Universal Education & Full Employability.
Education is a child’s right and need. We believe Education:
mainstreams a marginalized child, enlarging her world view, giving her confidence to chart her own destiny.
must confer the ability to earn a dependable livelihood as an adult
SSFA's several Education projects cover the spectrum of ages and development needs with the goals to:
- take care of pre-schoolers with day labor parents who work every day.
- mainstream marginalized street children.
- provide vocational training and thus a livelihood to low-literate youth.
- Girls Education Project: SSFA Girls Education Project aims to support girls financially and academically ensuring they graduate and have all the skills necessary to make life decisions successfully.
We understand it takes a village to raise a child and therefore, as with our other programs, we work on three fronts to ensure success: first, with the girls, second, with their schools and teachers, and third, their families and communities.
Goals and Activities of the SSFA Girls Education Project:
- Goals and Activities with the Girls: We aim to make sure they have the funding to continue school including for books, clothes etc. We make sure they get extra educational coaching after school to help them excel in studies so they have the ability to stand on their own feet if they wish.
Education in subjects is not sufficient. We provide them coaching in navigating circumstances they will encounter in life. For example, these are vulnerable girls from needy families. The parents being mostly at work, they are left without protection. There is high probability they will encounter a dangerous situation. We teach young girls to recognize situations where they are not comfortable and provide them a number they can call to ask for help if needed.
Activities like:
- Life Skills sessions (in and outside schools)
- Academic and material support
- Mentoring
- Exposure visits to places like museums and book fairs to broaden their horizons
- Goals and Activities with Schools:
We aim to make sure schools are able to provide a safe and encouraging environment for the girls. We also work with the schools to arrange academic and extra-curricular events for the girls.
Activities like:
- Setting up Resource Centres at schools
- Organizing Academic and Extra-curricular Events at schools
- Workshops with school teachers around Gender Sensitization
- Regular meetings and follow ups with teachers
- Setting up Girls’ Groups for social interaction and peer support
- Goals and Activities with Family & Community:
We aim to make sure the girls have the support of their parents and communities to study. We make sure the latter understand why it is important for a girl to be educated and able to stand on her own two feet even if she decides to become a housewife. In this way, they become truly invested in their daughters’ futures and will not put obstacles in her studies or ask her to stay back and help with the housework etc.
This is not easy. For a poor family, a pair of extra hands in the house or an extra income makes all the difference. So it becomes a question of asking them to bear some material difficulties now for a brighter future for their daughters.The financial subsidy we provide for their daughter’s education helps a lot in making this task easier. Even so, our teachers have to regularly reach out to parents and community leaders to keep at the task of changing a mindset (“why does a girl need to study when she is only going to get married?”) and resolve various issues and questions that come up.
Our activities:
- Parents meeting & workshops
- Campaigns / Awareness events
- Orientation for the local level bodies
- Non-Formal Education Centres (NFE’s): SSFA NFEs prepare slum school drop-outs for mainstreaming by proactively tracking them down, motivating them to go back to school, helping them catch up on the studies they missed and getting them admission to schools.
Convincing the parents who are themselves illiterate (day labor, farm workers) and therefore unaware of the value of education, while daughters are needed to help at home and sons to supplement family income, is a complex task.
The high drop-out rate at MCD slum schools is due to a number of factors.
- Boys drop out to work and supplement the family income.
- Girls drop out to help at home.
- A lack of toilets at school is also a big factor why girls stop attending.
- Both girls and boys drop out to take care of younger siblings because the parents work every day to keep the family’s head above water.
- Pupils who may be having trouble keeping up with the syllabus drop out because they have no one to ask for extra help.
Having addressed the reasons the child dropped out in the first place, SSFA’s Non-Formal Education centres (NFE), described here, address the need to track the children who have dropped out and help them mainstream back into the formal schooling system.
Vocational
Secondary education is insufficient to earn a dependable livelihood. Class X graduates from destitute areas scrape a miserable existence like their parents as day labor or in desperation take to crime.
SSFA provides vocational training to low-literate youth in handicrafts, painting, clay products and other innovative hand-made items so that they can earn a dependable livelihood and finally break the cycle of poverty.
“Vocational education is proposed to be made an important part of secondary education,” – Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Human Resource Development.
In its latest Eleventh Five Year Plan, the government too has accorded Vocational Training top priority as the best means to eradicate poverty and stressed the urgency acknowledging that capacity needs to expand from 2-3MM to 15 MM.
SSFA Vocational Courses Double Family Income and Provide a Dependable Livelihood
SSFA provides vocational training for low-literate poor girls and boys to make them financially independent while providing for a choice of lifestyles.
SSFA offers courses in computer training, beauty culture, cutting, sewing and tailoring and English.
Girls who want more flexibility can become freelance beauticians or open an in-home tailoring service. Computer courses provide government-backed JSS certificates.
The important thing is that these courses equip boys and girls to earn twice as much as what their family would earn combined.
Importantly too it is a regular income, with opportunity for growth as they build their businesses or get salary increments.
This is possible because SSFA provides market for the products made by the women and the children in various art exhibition centers like Dilli Haats.
Impact on Girl Child Upliftment and Women’s Empowerment
When an 18 year old girl showcases her ability to achieve a better socio-economic life, it does more for improving the perception of the girl child in her neighborhood than a hundred lectures or a million pamphlets.
Vocational Training is thus a powerful tool. By making the destitute financially independent, it breaks the cycle of poverty, breeds confidence, self-respect and turns marginalized youth into responsible citizens of society. Moreover, it is possibly the single most effective program for the upliftment of women, according them the ability to chart their own destinies.
Community Development:
Building Awareness and Action around Education: Going to school is not an obvious component of life in the communities SSFA works in. Parents who are poor and illiterate themselves are not convinced education is a good investment of time for their children especially girls.
Through door to door drives, street plays etc, SSFA educates parents in these communities about the advantages of education and convinces them to send their children especially girls to school.
Door to Door Recruitment
When a new education centre is opened, SSFA teachers and social workers who come from these same communities go door to door to recruit children, persuading the parents.
Monthly Parent Teacher Meetings
They then hold monthly meetings with the parents to reinforce the message and discuss the importance of education. This greatly helps in reducing truancy and drop-outs. It is a constant work and can prove exhausting because it involves changing a mindset.
How You Can Help
“Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi
The best way you can help make the world a better place is by living a life of compassion and providing a helping hand at the moment a need or opportunity presents itself as you go about your daily life.
Examples include diverse things like distributing alms on your birthday at temples and dargahs, giving blankets in winter to the homeless, helping your servants’ children get an education, feeding free animals in your colony, standing up for a girl being harassed, taking care of your aging parents, giving your children the right values and limitless other opportunities. Even something as small as taking a reusable water bottle from home instead of buying plastic outside because it shows compasssion for the earth that sustains you.
True compassion knows no boundaries and does not wait for a set time but flows naturally and perpetually. It is not a part of life, it is a way of life and brings as much and possiby more joy to the giver as to the receiver. And if everyone utilized even a few of the many opportunities that come our way to be compassionate, they would all add up to the extent that we would probably not even need NGO’s any longer.
श्रोत्रं श्रुतेनैव न कुण्डलेन दानेन पाणिर्न तु कंकणेन |
विभाति काय: करूणापराणाम् परोपकारैर्न तु चंदनेन ||
The ear is fulfilled when used for gaining knowledge than (only) wearing earrings. The hand is fulfilled when used for giving than (only) wearing bangles. Similarly, the body is fulfilled when used for doing good than (only) wearing beautifying creams.
– Sanskrit Subhashitani.
If, in addition to impacting your own individual world, you wish to also participate in our work, you are welcome to do so and can read about various ways below.
SSFA spends over 90% of the funding it receives directly on the projects for the children and communities setting up schools, buying books and medicines, building toilets etc. Average for other NGO’s is 40%-60%. We have low overhead costs because:
- We are a grassroots organization with our own centres so we can directly funnel the funds where they are needed without any other intermediary organization layer.
- Our Executive and Board Leadership are well-established professionals in their fields of medicine and business. They work pro bono for SSFA and are in fact major donors to SSFA covering main overheads like HQ rent and other costs themselves.
Ways You Can Help:
- Sponsor an education centre, health program or community development initiative: Early Childhood Care and Development Centre, Non-Formal Education Centre, Remedial Centre, Library, Vocational Training Centre, Toilet, Community Health Camp, Children’s Lunches and Health Check-Up.
- Donate in Kind: Medicines, meals, uniforms, books, office equipment, computers for our vocational training centre, or toys.
- Volunteer your expertise: Only project field staff is paid at SSFA. Everything else is done pro bono. If you are good at something, let us know, we will probably have a use for it. A teacher, website designers, writers, editors, photographers, secretarial assistants, everyone from all over the world with something to share is welcome.
- Buy Children-Made Goodies: We promote items some of these youths make like jute bags, candles, greeting cards. The profits all go to them.
- Spread Awareness: Share this website with your friends, family and anyone you think would like to get involved.