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Swapath Trust is a public charitable trust registered under Bombay Public Trust Act, 1950. The future of a country depends largely on its children. In order to ensure that children take on the mantle of building a strong and resilient country after they grow up, we must ensure that they are provided quality education and requisite support in their foundational years. However, given that in our country quality education is not equally accessible to each child, Swapath Trust is dedicated to address this need. Swapath Trust works for the education and rehabilitation of some of the most vulnerable children in Gujarat. Swapath has been working for the schooling of the needy children since 1997 and has supported over 15,000+ students till date.
Swapath believes that India can achieve just, equitable and sustainable development in the long term only with an appropriate education system. Both the central and the state governments have covered many miles in the area of infrastructure and in quantitative aspects in the education system, however, quality of education and governance have miles to cover to bring primary education to a desired level. Trying to change the system by itself without entering the system is almost an impossible task. The idea, therefore, is to accept the system and help change it (a) by offering model ways of doing so and / or (b) by pressing the system to change by appropriate advocacy strategies. Swapath Trust’s work is structured under three major programmes:
- School Retention Programme (SRP): This programme focuses on the education of children in the primary school-going age as well as children under six years of age.
- Higher Education Support Programme (HESP): Under this programme children from economically weaker sections of society are provided support to pursue higher studies.
- Special Rehabilitation Programme (SpRP): This programme aims to provide support to the most vulnerable children through rehabilitation or other special needs apart from financial support.
Apart from the programmes, Swapath has also support in the aftermath of various disasters in the first seven years of the new Millennium. Noteworthy among them is the educational support to 702 earthquake-affected students after the 2001 earthquake of Kutch, Gujarat. Similar support was offered to the riot-affected children in 2002 and the floods-affected children in 2005 and 2007. More recently, during the Covid -19 pandemic, apart from medical services offered through volunteers, Swapath Trust along with Vishwagram, is financially supporting and mentoring, for next 5 years, 600 of those children who lost one or both of their parents to Covid.