Wednesday, August 18, 2010
The last time I attended a flag hoisting session was when I was in the 7th grade.
At the cost of hurting your patriotism, I admit, I have never found much use for Independence Day celebrations.
However, at Pankhudi, we work for the betterment of under privileged children. So, I try to be as good an Indian as I am asked to be. Role model and all that you see.
This year the celebrations at Pankhudi attracted a crowd of 200 people.
If you are in Mumbai/Delhi/Pune/Bangalore/Chennai/Hyderabad/Kolkata, have two hours to spare on weekends and would like to volunteer for Pankhudi, please mail me at mukta.matta@gmail.com or leave a comment here.
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Pankhudi Mumbai has been teaching slum children of Suman Nagar, Chembur since April 2005.
In the past years, we have enrolled students throughout the year.
This year, we felt a need to bring more traction to our efforts and set measurable goals to track our performance.
Hence, we decided to conduct a survey in Suman Nagar and take a batch distribution test (BDT). We consciously decided to freeze a batch at the beginning of the academic year, teach the neediest of the lot and monitor their progress through the next few years.
More than 100 Pankhudi and Non-Pankhudi families were covered and data pertaining to their education, income and experience with Pankhudi were captured.
Finally, taking into account factors like family income, needs of students and the test results, we formed two batches, comprising 50 students, between the age group of 6-12 years. All students who could afford external tuition were promised complimentary support. However, in our core batches we only admitted students who couldn’t afford tuition and hence needed our support.
An important take away from this entire exercise was - most families' monthly income ranged between Rs. 3,000-8,000 and most were hard pressed for finances. Yet, not a single kid from the locality was a drop out!
In fact, many families sent their kids to tuition and saw education as a pathway to better lives.
This raised an important question for all of us: Young India demands a better quality of life and education. Are we as a nation ready to meet this ever increasing demand?
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2 comments:
This is really a good news.. I mean, what I was hearing is poor parents are reluctant to send their kids to schools , but your experience is contrary to this.
And you did survey & all ?..Hats off..
@Prasad - Yes, there are people who want their kids to start earning and supporting the family.. still, the majority we met, knew how education could change lives, and hence were very supportive.
I didn't do the survey alone :-) 7 of us went around for two weeks and gathered all data. Thanks.
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