The Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha’s Delhi unit has launched the programme to educate underprivileged children.
Young members of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha’s (BJYM) Delhi unit have launched a massive “Jan Siksha Abhiyaan” programme in the slum areas of Delhi with the aim and vision to educate the most underprivileged children living in the slums of the national capital.
The programme has been started from one of the slums in Nangali, in West Delhi’s Najafgarh area, where some 200 families mostly from Bihar, engaged in dairy farming and daily labour, have been residing for the last 30 years.
Children from this slum have been facing the problem of dropouts from school and lack of education for the girl child who are often married off at the age of 15 or 16 years. Residents also complain of the absence of any good school in the vicinity. The government schools that are present are often not taken care of, they say.
Suraj Mishra, founder of the programme and state co-convener of BJYM, Delhi, told The Sunday Guardian, “Education is one of the most important aspects for human development. When we visited the slums, we realised how impoverished the kids here are. This is when we decided that we will focus on their education to give them a better life which they can live in the future.”
He further added that convincing young kids who had dropped out to rejoin school was one of the biggest challenges. “When we started conducting surveys, we realised that kids, after studying till Class 7-8, don’t want to go to school as they see their parents working all day, and sometimes their parents put them to work to earn some extra money. It took a lot of effort to persuade them to send their kids to school. This is how we had managed to get re-admission of several kids to school,” Mishra said.
The condition of girls’ education is also abysmally poor in this slum. Just 8-10 girls in the entire slum have received education beyond Class 8. One of the local residents here said, “Girls here are married off early. Education is not a priority for us. But these people (volunteers) have come and let us see what they are able to give us.”
The volunteers of the programme have started holding classes for kids under the open sky during e evening hours, when they are back from school. The Abhiyaan is also assisting younger kids with admissions in colleges and coaching centres to prepare for competitive examinations. Deepak Kumar, Secretary, BJYM, Najafgarh, said: “We have been talking to several coaching centres and centres where preparations for competitive examinations are done to give free admission to children who have dreams to do big in life. Talks are on with some academies who teach dance and music, because we have realised that some kids are very talented in such fields and if trained, they will surely excel.”