A Visit to Our People
I always liked helping people, even at school, college, my
own relatives, and people used to tell me you can become a good psychologist,
but I guess that wasn’t my dream. Turns out, the dream is bigger than that.
So, like I said, I liked helping people and in busy
corporate life, finding time to help during office hours was pretty challenging
and when for several years I could not help anyone with anything, I started
feeling a hole in my life. For some time I could not understand what this hole
is all about. I was unable to get answers until recently when something
changed. Change did not happen in a day, it took some while but Change did
happen.
When I was not able to figure out the reason for feeling
empty despite having everything I started trying out things. I thought lets try
NGOs, but I had no clue how to get into it until one of my friends in office
told me about one of his friends who used to work relentlessly day in and day
out for the betterment of the schools and the education in our country. I felt great;
I thought I had a starting point.
Well I literally had. I visited one of the Urdu medium schools
for one of the events “Painting Competition” organized by ABC (Acharyas for
Better Community) and funded by Oracle.
It was amazing to see smiles on so many kids’ faces, their
passion to outperform even in the worst of conditions, they didn’t seem to care
whether fan is there or not, light is there or not, toilets are in usable
conditions or not, when they were given the opportunity to perform, they made the
day of all of us volunteers.
Post that event, I was happy, content but then this was just
a beginning. The organizer asked us if we want to accompany him in encouraging
parents from the slums to send their children to school.
We readily accepted but I guess we were not prepared for
what was about to come.
During our entire life, we try to avoid going into the slum
by closing our minds and eyes, but this time there was no escape. I felt like
slums called me out so that I can open up my eyes and see the world from a newer
perspective.
Surprisingly, we met amazing parents who despite living with
minimum possible amenities managed to send their children to schools. And the children
who were going to school spoke better English than we do, had better confidence
than we had, they were larger than life and we concluded that someone in the govt.
school that those kids used to go was doing awesome work in shaping the talent
which God already sends for all the children.
We were amazed to see all this.
We went further down in the slums and we met not so
aware/interested parents and we tried to encourage them to send their children
to school.
I used to think what benefit will they get by sending kids
to govt.schools and generally I used to think govt. schools are good for
nothing. But here is why: I got to know that if a govt. school did not have
minimum number of student s, that govt. school is shut down forever. Secondly,
if children stay back at home, while their parents are out for work, they are expected
to baby sit their siblings at an age when they themselves need the baby sitting.
Thirdly, they are vulnerable to cruel elements that are always ready to take
advantage of such situations.
One more interesting fact: People have to pay “hafta” in
settlements like slums if they want to live peacefully. And what are slums,
well, a temporary arrangement at some open land which could be filled with
garbage and what not and which for now is not being claimed by anyone but any day
the owner of that land can get all those settlements demolished.
After seeing/knowing all this I was shocked till the core of
my heart, scared, felt hopeless, overwhelmed by so many helpless situations, I
felt, even If I volunteer for my entire life, what difference and how big a
difference will I be able to make… I gave up…until recently.
After several days of trying to forget what really is out
there in the world, I got an update that ABC has now tied up IIT Kharagpur, I
got another update that the slums that we visited have started to send more
kids to school because of which the school that could have been shut down has
started to function on a better pace. And now comes the next challenge. Once we
have kids in the school, we are short on staff, short on resources…
In Govt. Schools, the teacher to student ratio is like one
is to many, and by many I mean kids from various standards together and that
one teacher is also expected to do all the office work. So, obviously that
teacher is a human being at the end of the day. All this said, many times the
child studying in class 7th has same standard as class 2nd
but they are in class 7th because of their age.
It is so much different from the schools that we have attended.
Looked like an entire new unseen world of education.
Anyways, recently, I attended one more event; it was a snack
distribution in one school and Sports Day in another school. I with few more volunteers
just distributed the juice and biscuit packets to the kids, man!, you got to
look the faces of the kids when they received items from us. They were beaming,
happy and shook hands with us – each one of them- and said Thank You Miss,
Thank You Sir… I don’t think I can ever forget that “Thank You” in my entire
life.
That sports day event was being conducted in just as much
space as one that can accommodate 2 dining tables back to back because that school
did not have a ground. But the excitement, the zeal among student was no less
than any normal school that we know of, rather sometimes, I felt It was even
more…
I wrote Certificates for them as a volunteer, felt like a
very small/unimportant job to me initially. But then I had the privilege to see
how much value those certificates acquired when they were received in the small
happy and excited hands. It made my day.
I am so much opposite of what I was earlier. I am no more
scared, I am positive and I want to get involved more and more. After all, it takes drop by drop to fill a
pitcher and someday If it is unable to fill up completely, at least it will not
be empty and that alone is all my motivation.
My little contributions can at least save the pitcher from going dry I
guess J
