Tag: Noida Underprivileged Children

Teach Underprivileged Children

‘Corporates Should Sponsor eLearning For Slum Kids’

By LokMarg

Rajneesh Verma, 24, an Engineering graduate from Noida, speaks about the challenges Covid-19 brought for his initiative to teach underprivileged children, and how he overcame them

Though I recently completed my Engineering course , I have been running an NGO called Slum Swaraj for the last five years. It is a Delhi-based initiative to teach underprivileged children which I started along with a college senior and friend Shivam.

When the pandemic broke out there was tremendous concern about how residents of slums would be able to maintain social distancing and follow other precautions, given their meagre resources and space crunch. It was feared that infection would go out of control in such areas. But those concerns proved to be unfounded medically.

However, the education of the young children was greatly affected. Majority of slum households own a basic phone, mostly used by the bread earner. We had stopped many slum children from being sent to work and take up formal education. We were worried that once the pattern of their regular education is broken, they might fall back in the rut of their old lives, where education is low on priority.

ALSO READ: ‘Covid-19 Wreaked Havoc On Slums’

In the initial days of lockdown, we had no clue how to cope up with the situation. Children had no phone for online learning and we could not risk a gathering of children for a real-time class. Finally, we devised a method. While earlier a volunteer would be teaching a batch of several students, we worked out an ‘Each One, Teach One’ method. A volunteer was assigned to each student and the classes went for an hour daily.

Children and volunteers associated with Slum Swaraj

The few with access to smartphones were given online coaching and those with access to basic phones were provided classes through a regular call. We realised that in one-on-one interaction or in online classes, children were more confident of asking questions, which they may have been scared of asking for the fear of being judged by their peers in regular classrooms.

We were hoping that in these trying times, corporate groups would come forward to sponsor smartphones or laptops for poor children under their CSR budgets but sadly that didn’t happen. It is easy for poor children to exit the classroom and get sucked into the cycle for survival.

WATCH: ‘No Smartphone, No Classes; Kids Play All Day’

Apart from formal education, we provide children updates on how to prevent or fight Covid-19 and ensure that they respect the state guidelines stay in place. Education is not just text-book learning. In pre-pandemic times we used to take children to malls, monuments, zoos, natural water bodies etc. to understand the world in totality but now we have suspended all such trips till situation is conducive for an outdoor activity.

Slum Swaraj volunteers

I am happy to say that we have been inundated with offers from people who want to volunteer in teaching poor children. Many people whose commuting time has been cut down because they are working from home are now using the extra time to give back to the community. We hope soon the corporates would step forward to support online education to be made affordable for the underprivileged.

‘Covid-19 Wreaked Havoc On Slum Children, Their Studies’

By LokMarg

Dev Pratap Singh Chauhan, 22, who spent his teen years on platforms consuming cheap contrabands, now runs Voice of Slum, an NGO which aims to save many a childhood

I was a child when I left home and became an urchin. I would roam in trains, used contrabands and became an addict like many children you may spot on platforms across India. After spending almost my entire teenage on tracks and platforms, I got in touch with an NGO which enrolled me for detoxification, rehabilitation and education. I must consider myself lucky therefore.

Hence, as I grew up, I always wanted to give back to our society; particularly to the underprivileged children. Although I had been employed in various positions in marketing, I was not oriented towards a career there. It was my friend Chandni, a rag-picker in her early years, who suggested that we could start our own NGO and translate our dreams into reality.

We discussed a blueprint and quit our jobs. We had little savings so we connected with like-minded people through NGOs and laid bare to them our plan. Finally, in 2017, our own NGO Voice of Slum, came into being.

The original plan was to provide basic behavioural training, in some cases even elementary education, to children from poor families and then lobby with local schools to get them admission under EWS (economically weaker sections) quota mandated by the government.

During early, struggling days, sometimes I had to sleep hungry as we had a rented an accommodation and had hired an expert teacher to impart the enrolled children basics of a civil society, etiquettes and language skills so that they may fare well in their interviews for school admission.

ALSO READ: ‘Covid-19 Is Time Give Back To Our Society’

We successfully placed many slum kids in good schools from our first batch and the work got us some attention from people with similar motivations. Some of these people offered monetary help too, and number of children in our NGO grew further. We contacted children of housemaids, security guards, sweepers, housekeepers, drivers, roadside vendors and many other such people from economically weaker sections and encouraged them to enroll with the NGO.

We had started with one rented hall for training the children two years back and now with growing numbers, we have to rent a three-storied building to accommodate all members. As our resources grow, so does the number of our enrollment.

We were charting a steady growth when the pandemic struck in March 2020. The lockdowns wreaked havoc on daily wagers. The children in my NGO mostly belong to that strata. Many parents of these children became jobless. We decided to shift gears immediately. We focusing on and provided food to the slum dwellers. We sought help from Donatekart in providing quality meal for these families.

WATCH: ‘No Smartphones, No Classes; Kids Play All Day’

Noida police officials also came forward to extend their help in distributing food packets. During a series of lockdowns and subsequent weeks of uncertainty, we have been able to distribute food worth Rs 50 lakh, through various donations.

I do not want to see our children begging on the streets or selling flowers and other wares on traffic signals. I do now want these children to be susceptible to same threats that I faced.

I am proud that many of the children who trained with us are also helping their parents in their work, in addition to pursuing their studies, as they have picked up hard lessons at an early age. It is a long road ahead of us, but we haven’t stopped; we are marching on.