March 2020, when the first lockdown was announced just like many other NGOs and individuals we also sprang into action;
Distribution of food kits,
conducted awareness programs
helped migrant laborers
provided jobs to unemployed women like making rotis for sharmik express trains and stitching masks and PPEs for crematorium workers and hospitals.
by Sep Oct 2020 when schools reopened online we realised this is going to be tough for the under privileged children . So we started offline tuitions at our center for only tenth grade government school children who were unable to afford online classes. About 15 of them had enrolled and now have successfully completed their tenth grade
By early 2021 we observed a very disturbing trend among children from slums and poor households.
Quite a few of them had not enrolled in schools the previous year and now we saw especially boys in gangs loitering around the area wasting their time in useless or antisocial activities like smoking, drinking alcohol, sniffing, drugs, substance abuse etc;
This also led to increase in petty crimes.
All this may have various reasons but mainly the lack of regular classes has been disastrous to children from very poor backgrounds.
We wanted to put an end to this ongoing tragedy.
So now when this academic year started we did the following:
Did a door to door survey and identified school drop outs.
If the children were from pvt schools, we counselled the parents to get their child admitted to govt school.
Children already enrolled in govt schools were followed up.
We have started a free tuition centre especially for govt school children in order to bring them up to the mark. So far around 250 children have registered their names all the way from third grade to tenth grade.
We are now facing this challenge of providing these children with good quality education in their govt school and even after school hours so that they are kept busy and not exposed to social vices. Make a good future for themselves and their locality as a whole. For this purpose we have identified about 10 teachers who are willing to come and teach these children but we lack the expertise and resources to keep this activity running for a long time. This is where we think that collaborating with prestigious organisations or individuals such as yourself will help us take this important mission forward. Further more we are stretching ourselves to support govt schools in our vicinity. Due to our efforts now more than 700 children have got themselves enrolled in higher primary govt kannada school. The school is now running out of space and teachers to accommodate new children. We don't want any child to be left out of schooling and therefore we are hoping that like minded organisations/individuals will come to support this cause.
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