NIT students turn literacy into mission

Ajay Joshi

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, March 5

Two years ago, Ashok, a boy residing in a small, tarpaulin-covered shack in the congested Bhagat Singh Colony slums in the city, qualified for the Joint Engineering Exam (JEE).

A student initiative —started 10 years ago to educate underprivileged slum children (many of whom worked as labourers earlier) -- has today turned into a movement. It has transformed the lives of countless slum children with Ashok being one of them.

In 2008, a few students of the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Jalandhar, started a makeshift school called Prayaas for migrant labourers on the NIT campus.

The initiative was a success and branched out to the slums at Maqsudan, an area with a predominant migrant population, in 2014.

Today, the Arya Samaj Mandir in Bhagat Singh Colony -- also known as “shiksha ka mandir” -- has more than 150 children taught by student volunteers of NIT. The two schools collectively have over 250 students.

Currently, 100 NIT students have taken the responsibility of teaching children daily. Out of the 100, 20-25 students are regular teachers.

Robin Kashyap, one of the founding members of Prayaas who joined NIT in 2007, said, “The idea to start Prayaas was born when I saw my seniors teaching some migrant children on campus. Under Dean Academics Professor BS Kaith, few other students started teaching children on the campus. The motivation to continue went up when a nine-year-old girl student started a school at her village in Bihar.”

”Santram Gurjar, an NIT student and volunteer teacher at Prayaas, said, “This is being done by students who themselves gather children from different slums and exhort them to come to the campus for classes. Every year, a new batch of NIT students – looking at their seniors -- starts volunteering at the school. The chain has not been broken since 2008 and has become a movement of sorts at NIT.”

All the students of Prayaas are also picked up and dropped by the volunteers free of cost.

The money for the project comes through donations by alumni, college staff as well as students, many of whom contribute from their pocket money to keep the project going.

Jasoda Devi, a native of Bihar who has been living in the slum area for over a decade, said, “Earlier, my three daughters were going to a local government school. But ever since they began taking classes at Prayaas also, their lives have changed. They are all praise for ‘bhaiyas’ and ‘didis’ who teach them. As the streets are unsafe, they even pick up the girls from home and drop them back.”

Poorni Devi, whose 12-year-old daughter and six-year-old son go to Prayaas, said, "After primary school, my daughter's education had come to a stop. There was no government school for secondary education. We didn't have the money to send her to any private school. This led to her sitting idle in the house. When we got to know about Prayaas, her studies resumed."