Suas Educational Development
Suas Educational Development is a secular registered charity in Ireland. Its goal is to tackle educational disadvantage in India, Kenya and Ireland and has an ethos of youth development. Suas was founded by a group of students from Trinity College Dublin in 2002, and has an annual income of over $1.3m and a staff base of 14 at its offices Dublin. Suas partners with several education NGOs in the developing world in order to provide education to underprivileged youth. These include Development Action Society - Kolkata, Sabuj Sangha - Kolkata, Vikramshila - Kolkata, Gatoto Community Primary School- Nairobi, Maweni Primary Schools- Mombasa and Kongowea Primary Schools- Mombasa.
Programmes
Overseas
The charity's 'Education for All' programme is intended to provide technical and financial support to eight partner and education projects in India and Kenya, promoting education for 14,000 children a year. The money and resources provided by Suas to these partner schools are intended to enable the schools to provide holistic education to the community.
Since 2002, the 'Suas Volunteer Programme' has facilitated over 600 volunteers to work with schools and education projects in India and Kenya. They work as teaching assistants and coaches for 10 weeks during the summer and fundraise enough to cover the costs of the trip and a donation to the school.
Ireland
In Ireland, Suas has a network of 10 college based societies which provide opportunities for members to volunteer in the local community, to fundraise for the overseas schools and to raise awareness about development issues. Suas runs an annual programme of 30 evening courses and speaker events nationwide that aim to "engage and inspire" participation in social change.
A mentoring programme is also run for transition year students from disadvantaged areas in Dublin. The programme is run jointly with the Centre for Research in IT in Education in Trinity College, Dublin.
The charity also runs the Suas Global Issues series of courses, which are designed to give participants an overview of global development issues, and are run in third-level institutions across Ireland over 6 to 8 weeks.