Educational Support to 100 Victims of Child Labour

Zekda a village with a population of 2152 and 431 households is situated in Santalpur Taluka in Patan district.

Once Ashray team visited Zekda Primary School to conduct awareness activities through a drawing competition where children participated enthusiatically. As the competition was going on a team member of Ashray noticed that the kids were having difficulty in basic reading and writing skills which should not have been the case if they were taught in the school with utmost care. When the Principal Mr. Mukesh Chaudhary was asked about the same, he shares “Parents are least interested in their kids education as they are busy whole day to earn their bread and butter and want the children to do the same at an early age. Hence the irregularity of students and other administrative bottlenecks like understaffed schools, poor teaching quality and other additional Government duties of the staff members lead to poor quality in education.”

Babubhai, Sarpanch of Zekda, shares “A survey was conducted by Ashray to check the reading and arithmetic skills of our children, I was in a view that the children of our village are doing well in studies and they will pass the survey which consisted basic test of the reading and arithmetic skills. I was shocked to know that out of 81 children surveyed of 3-5 grade, 42 children were unable to read a simple paragraph in Gujarati language and 52 were not able to solve a simple two digit addition/ subtraction. Similarly out of 64 children surveyed from 6-8 grade 12 children were unable to read a simple paragraph in Gujarati language and 21 were not able to solve a simple two digit addition/ substraction”.

A meeting was called by Ashray team and the result was shared with parents who themselves were illetrate to understand the impact of the same. Ashray proposed the idea of tution classes initially and then introduction of remedial classes for the students. We then sought funding from a known person who obliged and then planned out the entire operations to be carried out at the village level from identification of the teacher to setting up the entire model in place. Permissions were then sought with the District Primary Education Officer, Block and Cluster Resource Coordinator (CRC) to identify the students. As per the suggestion of CRC, students were identified from grade one to eighth who faced problem in basic reading, writing and problem solving.

Its been 9 months and today all the enrolled students are improving. Riddhi who studies in 1st grade didn’t know the alphabets when she joined and after 4 months she knows the alphabets and is able to cope up in the school due to efforts put in. Our children have a lot of potential and if guided properly we are sure they will put in a lot of effort and come out with flying colors.