History

Humble beginnings

Dr Kiran Martin is the founder and director of Asha. As a young paediatrician in 1988, Dr Martin became aware of a cholera outbreak in one of Delhi's slums and was determined to help. Few resources were available and so she began to treat patients at a borrowed table placed under a tree outside the slum.

When Dr Martin ventured into the slum she had to wade through mud and rubbish that had built up in the narrow spaces between houses. The cholera epidemic was spreading via contaminated water from shallow wells, so Dr Martin discouraged the slum dwellers from drinking that water and began teaching them about how disease is spread.

A sympathetic group heard of Dr Martin's work in that slum and provided a grant of 25,000 rupees to build a room that could serve as a clinic. When the room was ready, between 100 and 150 patients came for treatment every day, most of them suffering from preventable diseases. The slum women who visited spent time speaking with Dr Martin about other problems. They had no toilet facilities and access to clean water was very scarce. Some of them were suffering abuse from their partners or from others and had nowhere to go for help.

A chance to act

A couple of months after the clinic was built, the government of Delhi completed work on a toilet block at one end of that slum; a basic amenity which was long overdue. An inauguration ceremony was due to be held there with various politicians and dignitaries present. Seeing a chance to highlight the problems people were facing, Dr Martin acted as a spokesperson for the slum residents. They formed a group and refused to let the inauguration go ahead until the politicians had looked around the slum itself and witnessed the appalling living conditions.

The politicians were shocked at what they saw. Shortly afterwards, Dr Martin received a letter from the Slum Commissioner describing the impression that the visit had made upon him, and promising his support. Dr Martin realised that environmental improvements could be made by government departments, but empowerment programmes would allow the slum residents to make certain changes themselves. She recognised the potential of the women in particular, as they spent a lot of their time within the confines of the slums and could achieve a great deal if they formed groups and were educated about their rights.

Partnerships forged

In the same month, Tearfund visited Delhi and heard of the work being done in that slum colony. Impressed, they began a partnership with Asha and the first reliable funds started to come in, allowing further clinics to be built in nearby slums. By 1989, after several meetings with the slum departments, Dr Martin decided that slum residents needed to be granted land rights if any changes were to be sustainable. In collaboration with the government, a slum called Ekta Vihar was the subject of a major project which saw slum residents gaining control of the land where they had built their homes. In addition, residents were given access to healthcare and education which allowed them to go about claiming the basic rights that they deserved.

Many successes had already been achieved by 1990 when Asha was officially registered as a non-profit organisation. Further support from Tearfund meant that expansion was rapid for some years, with several staff being taken on and work beginning in more slums. Asha was the first NGO in Delhi to collaborate with the government as well as the communities that it was aiming to help. The government acknowledged the benefits of this and has since worked in similar ways with other organisations, and adopted Asha's strategies for its own projects.

Growth and success

After being founded by one person who worked surrounded by dirt, ignorance and despair, and who faced additional obstacles in the form of political intrusion and corruption, Asha is now transforming the lives of nearly 300,000 slum dwellers in 46 slum colonies around the city of Delhi. Today, the government, visitors and the slum communities themselves have great respect for Asha and all that it has achieved.

Click here to see a profile of Dr Kiran Martin.