Army Navy Air Force Wives Charitable Association (ANAWA) was registered in 1989 as a Delhi based NGO. The brainchild of Dr.(Mrs) Ramesh Chibber and few like-minded Officers wives from the Defence forces, living both in Delhi and NOIDA, keen to devote time toward the upliftment of the Girl Child and improve health facilities for the marginalized.
Towards this end ANAWA was engaged in remedial education, conducted in the Govt Schools in Kailash Colony and Defence Colony, running of a play centre in the Children’s Cancer Wing of All India Institute of Medical Sciences. The flagship project, ANKUR, was started in 1994 in Sector 21, NOIDA, and an Adult Literacy Centre, known as UJALA, also was started in an old School Building in Sector 37, NOIDA. Later DEEKSHA was initiated to support bright students of ANKUR for placement in mainstream schools. ANAWA was also actively involved with many Government initiated projects in the Healthcare segment in the rural areas of the new township of NOIDA. These included conducting Cancer Detection and Blood donation camps, Polio, Smallpox and Hepatitis eradication programmes and so on. ANAWA established affiliation to National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), initially in Delhi.