Shreyasi Singh New Delhi

EIGHT-year-old Rehana and her elder sister, 10- year-old Kutty, have ambitions. Rehana wants to be a teacher. Kutty dreams of becoming a gritty, tough-talking police officer. It isn’t unusual for children to aspire. Except that two years ago, Rehana and Kutty, sunk in poverty, couldn’t imagine that such careers were within their reach. They spent all day helping their mother, a single parent, eke out a living picking waste around the posh PVR Cinema in Saket, South Delhi.

Now Rehana and Kutty go to an English-medium school called Little Ones Public, not far from Saket, a journey made possible by Literacy India’s Street To School programme. Indraani Singh, India’s first Airbus pilot, is the founder and head of Literacy India, a non-profit based in Gurgaon.

“When PVR Nest, the charity arm of PVR Cinemas, wanted to rehabilitate children around their movie halls in Basant Lok and Saket, we jumped at the chance to do this with them,” says Indraani who is passionate about empowering underprivileged children.

“We targeted children who had run away from home, who are orphans or have single parents. We focussed on the ragpicker community, junkies and drug addicts. We wanted to get them off the streets and into classrooms,” she explains.

The Street To School programme began in May 2006 with three hours of informal learning organised in a public park near the PVR Cinema with students picked up from the streets. Indraani says each child was identified by programme volunteers. The volunteers counselled children and motivated their parents to grab this opportunity to study and to look beyond street life.

“It was not enough to just provide an atmosphere of learning. Our work began with motivating and convincing these children to come to our classrooms. That was tough to do. Street life is so fluid that they find it difficult to adjust to routine. Some children dropped out too. We try to counter all this by caring. Often, it’s the first time the children have somebody to consistently care for them,” she explains. Nutritious meals were also provided as an incentive to encourage the children to stay on in the programme.

The strategy has clearly worked. The Street To School programme has shifted from the park to a full-fledged learning centre in the Said-ul-Ajab neighbourhood in southwest Delhi, complete with classrooms, a computer lab, a play area and an activity centre. Indraani says the need to have a centre with permanent classrooms was imperative. Literacy India wanted children to have a genuine school-going experience, something that was difficult to do in a makeshift learning environment within a public park.

Books following National Literacy Mission guidelines are used to introduce first-time learners to basic Hindi, English and Maths. Children
who studied earlier but had gaps in their education are brought up to standard with the aim of enrolling them into formal schools.

Over 110 street children, mainly migrants from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, who are between four to 16 years of age, have benefited from the programme. Forty-five children, like Rehana and Kutty, have successfully enrolled in the formal school system. Literacy India funds their annual fees of Rs 12,000 per annum, and provides them with uniforms and books. The children continue to come to the learning centre after school for tuitions, remedial help and extra-curricular activities.

“Many are doing extremely well in school. They are eager to learn and they are hardworking. We are able to mainstream younger children in a year or a year and a half of working with them,” explains Sohit Yadav who manages the Said-ul- Ajab learning centre.

Over 50 children are currently enrolled in classroom study at the Literacy India centre till they are mainstreamed. Yadav says the emphasis is on experiential learning to enable children to enjoy education. “We have seen these children respond very well to extra-curricular activities. They learn so much through dancing, painting, theatre. When we do things creatively, they enjoy the experience.”

Arif, who is 17, couldn’t agree more. Arif has been in the Street To School programme for nearly two and a half years and is preparing for his Class 10 exams through the National Institute of Open Schooling. A dropout of a mosque school, Arif was working as a domestic help in a large bungalow in Saket where his mother cleaned and cooked, when he first heard about Literacy India from his friend Sonu.

“After I clear my Class 10 exams, I want to be a dancer. I got the chance to learn dance here. My parents are so proud of me now. My mother was thrilled when all my relatives and friends complimented me on my dancing prowess at a wedding we went to,” says Arif after giving us an impressive dance performance to a blockbuster Hindi film song. He has also learnt to play the drums very well, picking up the skill from a foreign volunteer who spent a few weeks at the Said-ul-Ajab centre. He likes to impress fellow classmates and visitors by playing the drums.

Like Arif, his friend, 14-yearold Geeta likes to display her skills. Daughter of a domestic worker and a vegetable seller, Geeta is diligently preparing for her Class 10 exams. She enjoys the edge she has in English, undoubtedly seen as the passport to a good life by all students at the centre.

“After I dropped out of school, I thought my life was over. But now I know we need to build our careers ourselves. I study a lot so that I can be successful,” the young girl says. Geeta is doing well in the digital animation and paintbrush curriculum Literacy India runs in its computer lab. She proudly shows us an animation strip she is working on. Geeta has, in fact, become an ambassador for the programme. Two of her friends have enrolled in the programme after seeing her progress.

These stories undoubtedly give programme workers the drive to carry on. But Yadav is quick to point out problem areas too. “Hygiene remains a big concern. It’s very obvious in Little Ones Public School, for example, where children of more privileged families come too. I don’t blame our children though. There is no water in the settlements where most of them live. We have managed to deal with some issues but several remain unsettled.”

To educate mothers on issues like hygiene, Literacy India has taken up literacy and vocational training for women. Many mothers are firsttime learners.

Indraani says it’s been wonderful to see so many benefits emerge from the street to school programme. “We have evolved a digital education programme from our experience with teaching these children. I am often surprised that even children right off the streets know how to download music or what a file or folder is. I think being tech savvy is in the India DNA. Our digital learning programme recognises this. Even children who find classroom learning boring are excited about learning digitally. These tools break the monotony of their world,” she explains. “A well-rounded digital learning programme can open up education for the urban poor.”

Street To School is currently funded by PVR Nest, Tata Consultancy Services, National Basket Association Cares, the philanthropy arm of the American professional basketball organisation, and Encore, a software outsourcing firm. Literacy India is now looking for additional funding to expand the programme and open other centres. They say they have managed to put in place a rehabilitation model that can be easily replicated.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Newsvine

del.icio.us

Want to give feedback on this article

Name Email Comment on this article (Not more than 250 character) Security Image Write the characters in the Security Image in the box, ( Case Sensitive )

Disclaimer

The views expressed here are strictly personal and civilsocietyonline.com does not necessarily subscribe to them. We shall endeavour to upload/publish as many of the comments that are submitted as possible within a reasonable span of time, but we do not guarantee that all comments that are submitted will be uploaded/published. Messages that harass, abuse or threaten other members; have obscene, unlawful, defamatory, libellous, hateful, or otherwise objectionable content; or have spam, commercial or advertising content or links are liable to be removed by the editors. We also reserve the right to edit the comments that do get published. Please do not post any private information unless you want it to be available publicly.