27th September 2017
Written by : V G Krishnan
For many people, the number 13 is considered as unlucky but for us at ShikshaDaan Foundation, the number 13 proved to be very lucky. On the 13th of July, Prashant Pal from Pure India Trust, one of our partners, took us to four schools in the district of Karauli in Rajasthan.
Besides Prashant, Bindu, Bindu’s mother, and me (Krishnan), we were also accompanied by Ashwin, son of our dear friends, Hareesh and Swapna. Ashwin was here with us for about a week, during his break as he is about to begin his college at the University of Texas, Austin, USA. Ashwin wanted to understand what we do in ShikshaDaan and specifically our activities when we travel to various districts, and this was the perfect opportunity to help him understand. There isn’t a better way than to see the activities in person.
We left Gurgaon at about 5.30 am and it was raining, a good sign for Bindu and I. Prashant came from Jaipur along with his mother, and we met at a junction in Sikandra, on the Jaipur Agra road.
We visited four schools in the district of Karauli, and of them three have classes upto the XIIth std, and one up to Class VIII. The total strength of the students from these schools is nearly 1800+, and all of them are in remote villages. We reached the first school at Shri Mahabir Ji at about 11.15 am and over the next five hours, we were treated to various degrees of outstanding Rajasthani hospitality by these schools. The second school was at Badagaon, then the third school was at Ronsi and the final school was at Manoharpura.
We could meet with the promoters and Principals, key staff members and most importantly interact directly with the students at all the schools. We asked the students about their family background and what they wished to pursue as a career option. Not so surprisingly, for girls the career choice turned out to be teaching and for boys it was predominantly joining the army or paramilitary forces. Despite the prodding from Prashant and the school staff, most of the girl students refused to even look up and speak to us… a huge cultural issue.
The infrastructure in these schools is not the very best but the teachers and Principals seemed to be highly motivated to ensure that these students from rural backgrounds at least get educated well. All of us who were visitors couldn’t handle the heat and were drinking water and fanning ourselves while these students were sitting on the ground with no fan and still trying to focus and learn…. a huge revelation that in these modern times, there are still pockets of such backward infrastructure and it just renewed our vow to help in any way we can.
The school management team and the teachers were very keen to get the infrastructure upgraded and support the students in any way they could leading to a better quality of education. One of the positive developments that we noted was the establishment of Computer Shiksha centres (a partner of ShikshaDaan) in all the four schools, and we could see a computer class in action at The Sujith school near Ronsi Village. The other three schools were also starting their classes shortly. These schools will also benefit tremendously from the English Helper program as they can convert themselves into English medium schools. This was a clear takeaway for us.
The students of the school in Manoharpura had waited for almost two hours beyond their regular school timings and were thrilled to see us. They were particularly excited to see a tall young man (Ashwin of course) from the US who spoke a sentence or two in Hindi. Prashant had brought the shoes that he had received from United Health Group for the students of the school. In fact this is the school where Prashant had done his initial schooling as his family lived in this village.
Thanks to Prashant for an awesome trip as it was he who had planned the entire trip meticulously. We met students, teachers, principals of four different schools in a completely rural area of Rajasthan. We could understand their challenges and we will, for sure, come up with a plan to support these students and the schools too.