Leading children and being lead by them

A talkative kid called Tehasin Khan used to work in our college mess. The disconcerting experience of seeing this child clean our tables and mop the mess floor made him the subject of most of our conversations. His cheerfulness made us think twice about all the hurdles that we had assumed insurmountable. We were surprised to see how curious he was to learn more inspite of his present situation. In just a few weeks he got acquainted with most of the college community for this purpose. He soon had people demanding his presence in order to teach him odiya and mathematics. His desire to learn grew but none knew how best to help him in the long run. He had willingly dropped out of government school and we sympathised with his decision considering how dysfunctional government schools were.

One day while he was learning math with me, he told that he is about to quit his job in order to find another one with a better pay so that he could save enough to go back to school. That was when we decided to take on the challenge of getting him back to school.

Tehasin belongs to a family in which almost everybody is a daily wage labourer. Even if we were to send him home and admit him to a nearby school, he would soon drop out of school and start working again elsewhere. In fact, soon after he left his job in the mess, he joined some other place to work even though we had instructed him to prepare for the school we hoped to find. Another problem is that he is now too old to be considered for admission to most elementary schools. Going by his actual age, he should have been in class 7th, but even the learning curve of a class 4 curriculum would have been too steep for him.

I was under the impression that the most difficult thing was to acquire necessary funds to send him to a good quality school. However the real challenge was not that. In 3 months we were able to find just one private school which was willing to discuss the terms of his admission. We were forced to reject their offer as they required him to learn 4 languages in the period of 3 months for admission in his age appropriate class. After many a desperate emails later, I finally found a school 300 km from Bhubaneswar that seemed ideal for his education as it recognised his needs and had teachers enthusiastic enough to educate him. Dhanadha Mishra , the founder of this school helped us get him admission in Shaala Public School.

Tehasin studies there now. He talks to me daily about the exotic birds that visit the school campus, the vegetables that his caretaker grows in the school plot and his activities in school. His progress in just 2 months of schooling has been astounding.

This experience humbled me to the plight of all the out of school children that I saw living in the slums facing my institute for the past 4 years. I realised how ostracised this community felt. I understood why most children seemed to be out of school. For some, their parents cant afford the fees of other private schools, or cant afford the opportunity costs of not having their children working for the family purse. So, they either don’t send them to school at all or must send them to a public school, where they will likely feel abandoned.

In order to experience the gravity of the situation I went to the slums for enquiry with our college sweeper as my guide. Sure enough, children and their parents thronged around me debunking the myth of their disinterest towards education. Thus my college’s (NISER) social outreach club — Zariya took birth.

The objective is to establish a genuine relationship with these children and in the long run get them admitted to schools.

41 volunteers have been having ‘get-to-know’ sessions with 50 underprivileged children over the past 2 months. In these sessions, each volunteer spends atleast 3 hours with the kids assigned under him/her every week. The objective is to establish a genuine relationship by teaching these children and in the long run get them admitted into schools. The volunteers would continue their support towards the children’s day-to-day school activities to ensure they are well accommodated.

The hopeless gaze that I wore the past 4 years when I looked at the slum that I passed by several times a day has transformed into one filled with expectations. The slum children who were anything but visible relate to beautiful memories now.