Slum children get free education, courtesy aided school principal

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, August 14

In the narrow lanes of a slum area of the Indira Colony here, when children recite days of the week and months of the year in English loudly, passers-by and bystanders stop for a while and look at them in astonishment.

The majority of the children from the area do not go to schools. Not only this, the children who did not know even about the name of the area they were living in, now have the knowledge about the state and the country.

This is among those areas which does not have proper facilities but due to the efforts of a man, the children are getting education and made aware of local issues. A transformation can be seen in the children in the past three months since they have been imparted education.

Their parents, who do menial jobs, could never have imagined that their wards will one day help them in buying things as the latter now know how to calculate and could save their parents from dishonest shopkeepers. Raj Kumar Sharma, principal of Devi Sahai SD Senior Secondary School, Basti Nau, is the man behind this change.

After attending the school in the morning till 5 pm (as exams are going on), in the evening instead of going home and relaxing, the principal goes straight to the slum area in Indira Colony and gathers the students and teaches them. Even the childrenwait for their ‘teacher’ to come and they all reach the place before time in excitement.

Around 150 children are taught by him. The principal now plans to cover around 1,000 children who are staying in slum areas.

“I will keep two or three teachers and will pay them from my pocket, I just want the future of the country to be educated,” the principal said, adding that he always wanted to help society in some way or the other and this is when he thought of imparting education to the children who are totally oblivious to what is happening outside.

“After my retirement, I want to carry on this work as nothing gives me more happiness than looking at the confident faces of the children when they learn something,” he said.

Sharma also provides free stationery to the children. He said it is one’s duty to pay society back and not always look up to the government for help.

Sharma has also started a dispensary in his school where the management has hired a doctor.

“The facility of dispensary is available in private schools under the CBSE, but we have started the same for free of charge for the welfare of our students,” said the Principal.

The initiatives and zeal to work don’t end here. Sharma, with his efforts, made it possible to start commerce and science streams in his school. He made the school co-educational, which was earlier only for boys.

Sharma said while other schools in the area did not have the NCC, he made it sure that his school had this important discipline. He had joined as a mathematics teacher in Devi Sahay SD Senior Secondary School, Sodal Road, in 1989.

He has also identified 81 students who have lost their fathers and special coaching is being given to them by him.

“Many mothers of students who had no father would often also come to us and complain that their wards were not serious,” he said, adding that he made it sure that he gave special attention to such students. Besides giving them special coaching, the students are also given uniform free of cost and no fee is taken from them.