• Corporate Social Responsibility
•           Long term projects
• • Rural
  • Urban
• One time support

Urban projects

Primary Healthcare Centre in garbage dumping ground - Deonar, Mumbai

GSK India runs a medical centre in Deonar Dumping Ground, the biggest dumping ground in Mumbai. This centre provides Primary healthcare facilities and quality health education to the children who are rag pickers and their families who work in and around the dumping ground. This project is implemented in collaboration with Niramaya Health Foundation. It was found that in addition to the basically unhygienic environment, children in the age group of 5 to 14 were exposed to waste substances like used needles, syringes, medical equipments, un-segregated garbage, etc. Due to these conditions there were frequent injuries and long term infections like respiratory problems and skin diseases. The problems and health issues in this area were largely neglected; hence the Company stepped in and decided to support this cause.

The 200-hectare garbage dumping ground at Deonar is frequented by rag pickers, over half of whom are women and children as young as seven or eight years. They generally suffer from malnutrition, fever, cuts / injuries, respiratory problems, TB and other related diseases. Niramaya runs a comprehensive health care programme for the community to improve the quality of their life. This is achieved through providing better healthcare services, reduction in anemia/ nutritional deficiencies/ ailments and creation of a cadre of peer educators. With GSK's support for 2 years now, there is an improvement in their health status in the given unhygienic environment. With the total beneficiaries being around 10,000 the services have been of great help to these otherwise neglected communities in Mumbai. Additionally, regular camps for immunization, eye camps, HB estimation camps are conducted.

The achievements of the project include improved life expectancy of the children and women rag pickers in the dumping ground with better healthcare, while reducing the rate of anemia and other nutritional deficiencies and general ailments in the community.

Mid-day Meal project

GSK India has been supporting the Mid-day meal program implemented by ISKCON Food Relief Foundation for Municipal school students from the year 2005. The mid-day meal program is an initiative run by the Government of India with the dual objective of not only enhancing levels of attendance in these schools, but also providing them with nutritious meals. This is an on-going project which currently supports few schools and over 1000 students in Mumbai. This project has visibly shown good results in terms of increase in attendance and improvement in health standards.

Aashirwad school for mentally challenged children, Delhi

GSK India also supports Aashirwad school for mentally challenged children at Delhi by way of cash donation to run its day to day activities.

Life Trust Learning Disabilities Outreach Program

Life Trust is a charitable trust established in the year 2000 with a mission of improving quality of education in Municipal run secondary schools using technology and visual aids. Before 2007, there were a large number of cases of school dropouts from many Municipal Schools across the city. Life Trust assessed that there was a need in the community and decided to address this problem of school dropouts. One of the reasons for dropouts that came forth during the intervention was the difficulties faced by kids while learning.

Learning disabilities lead to children being stigmatised amongst the peer groups resulting in social pressures on them. This condition is born out of ignorance and hence early intervention with remediation can help children cope with it better.

In May 2007, Life Trust established the Life Center for learning disabilities in collaboration with Nair Hospital. The center is only the second of its kind in Maharashtra, which is authorised to certify learning disability in students.

However, having only one center is not sufficient in a city like Mumbai. It is a necessity to create an outreach programme wherein the Life Trust team will visit the BMC Schools to undertake the necessary Learning Disability test. After a detailed analysis, if need be the children and the parents would be called for further counselling at the Nair Hospital center. Through such intervention, it is the mission of Life Trust to allow students to cope independently in the regular educational system.

In the past two years, over 5,000 students have been registered and tested, out of which 925 have been put through the process of remediation and 1600 municipal schoolteachers have undergone training on learning disabilities.

GSK India has associated itself with this project by supporting the outreach programme with financial support to run it.

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