Mumbai: Rohan Muhukar (9) wants to be a pilot and Preeti Kadunkhe (12), a doctor. These are not children studying in the best of CBSE or ICSE schools of the city. They live under the Ghansoli Mahape bridge in Navi Mumbai and go to municipal schools nearby.
When Afsana Parveen of the Aam Aadmi Party and her husband started teaching 20 of these children two years ago, they found a child of Class 7 could not do mathematics of even Class 3. Now, there are about 60 children in all – mainly from under the bridge where the street school runs and some from nearby slums and small jhuggis behind the Ghansoli railway station. While some of their families are traditional basket makers from Rajasthan – a community called ‘jogi’, parents of others sell balloons. Some of their families are also into begging and some families nomadic.
“I was shocked by the Nirbhaya case. In other rape cases too, I saw the perpetrators were mostly uneducated people,” said Afsana Parveen, who is at the helm of this initiative called ‘Pehchaan – The Street School’ that started in Navi Mumbai and has now been replicated in Bihar and Delhi. “I felt education can change the situation,” she added.
“Whether it is girls or boys, here we openly discuss matters like eve-teasing and why we need to respect women,” she said.
After a demolition drive that took place some months ago, Pehchaan lost some of the basic infrastructure it had created for these children. “We had four computers that volunteers had brought when computers were replaced in their office and also a projector,” said Afsana.
Now, children sit on mats and volunteers teach them in the light of emergency lamps and candles. Classes take place in this humble street school every day between 7.30 and 9 pm. “That is when our volunteers return from work. It is a convenient time for them to drop by for teaching,” she says.
Engineers, doctors, call-centre employees and retired teachers – the Pehchaan team has volunteers from varied backgrounds. Sushila Tiwari, a retired Sanskrit teacher of a private school, is one of their regular volunteers. Speaking about a child she says, “This one here is very intelligent. I wish she could go to a good private school. In fact many of these children are very talented. They can become anything they want if given the opportunity and direction. That is what we are trying to do,” she says.
Another volunteer the children seem to be fond of is Gautham Rao. A businessman by profession, he came to know about Pehchaan through a friend and has been a regular ever since. “Many people want to do this kind of thing, but they are afraid they cannot find the time. I see that many of these children have good grasping power – some are good with numbers, others with language,” he said.
In a bamboo shack in a corner is an almirah and storage table which house books, geometry boxes and stationery items, all donated by the volunteers. “We have about 15 to 20 dedicated volunteers and we only take donations in kind. What we need is their time. Coming everyday and teaching is the biggest contribution one can make,” says Afsana.
Khima Chauhan and his wife are busy scraping the bamboo when Afsana approaches them. “They cleared this space for us when we began, saying, ‘You teach here, we want our children to learn’,” said Afsana.
“We want them to study, we will not let them do what we have been doing,” said Chauhan.
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