A facilitator taking a phone photograph with a crowd of uniformed schoolchildren

ME to WE

It started in 2007 as a volunteer school on the banks of the Yamuna. Some of the children who came to it are now core team members here.

What we do

Over 3,000 girls and boys in thirteen years. Over 200 came back as peer leaders.

3,000⁺ Girls and boys through the programme over thirteen years 200⁺ Alumni who came back as peer leaders over thirteen years 400⁺ Young people through job-exposure camps since 2019

What it sets out to do

Depth in one place

The objective is to be the organisation still in these streets in ten years, rather than the one that reached more children in five.

Move a child from what I need to what we do

The name is the objective. There is no session at which it happens and no form on which it can be recorded.

Still be useful after the last exam

School stops and the questions get harder. The aim since 2019 has been to be reachable at that point rather than a memory of it.

Be handed over

Peer leadership is the intended end state. The measure is how much of this keeps running when we are not the ones running it.

A crowd on the Yamuna floodplain looking out over the river

Some of them work here now.

Strategy and activities

It began on the riverbank

A volunteer school on the Yamuna's banks in 2007. It became ME to WE in 2009, and the name is the method: the work moves from what I need to what we do.

One settlement, not a catchment

The children come from Jagdamba Camp, Sheikh Sarai. The same settlement, the same families, year after year — which is why a fourteen-year-old here has usually known us since they were seven.

The rest of how it runs

Then it follows them out of school

Since 2019, over four hundred young people through job-exposure camps. That is the part of the programme that starts where school stops, and it is where staying with one settlement pays off.

The alumni come back

Over two hundred returned as peer leaders. A programme partly run by the people it was built for is not a nice detail — it is the only version of this that survives us losing interest.

Who it is for

Children from Jagdamba Camp, Sheikh Sarai

One settlement in south Delhi. Not a catchment and not a district — a set of streets and the same families in them.

The ones who came back

Over two hundred alumni returned as peer leaders. They are both who this is for and who runs it.

School-leavers

The job-exposure camps are for the ones who have finished with school and are not finished with us. That group is on this list because they asked, not because we designed for them first.

Us, eventually

Some of the children from the riverbank school are core team members here.