By Jeremy Issac | Assistant Manager - Donor Relations
Sahaara believes that every person has a dream and our work centers around ensuring that marginalized persons are able to articulate and work towards achieving their dream. Children in observation homes are one of the most marginalized populations in Mumbai.
The children who live in these Homes come from different states of India and are educated in a Marathi medium school run by the Home. The language difference makes it difficult for them to learn. Remedial education helps in coaching the children in the Marathi language as well as their school subjects thereby helping them understand what theyare learning and maintaining their interest to continue education once discharged from the Home.
Our Staff have been conducting an After School Remedial class at the Chembur Children’s Home for several years. Many of the children have traumatic pasts and are faring badly in School. Unable to cope with the Grade Level Requirements, they are falling seriously behind in academics. Consequently, it was observed that many children from Grade 3 – 5 had struggle in reading letters in the Marathi alphabet and even counting till20.
Thus, with the support and permissions of the Home & the School authorities in 2017, we decided to launch a three stage Remedial Program for catering to the educational need of the children.
This program involves diagnostic testing in the initial stages, after which the child is introduced to an appropriate curriculum which is designed around his needs. Innovative methods are used to help the child to learn and succeed. After we had run this course we were able to see improvement in the academics of the child thus building confidence in them to flourish in theirstudies.
During the period April to June 2019, 75 children were provided with remedial education.
Runaway Child…
Vikash, an 8-year-old boy, who lived with his parents, a brother and a sister. Vikash comes from an abusive household, where his father was an alcoholic. His father would regularly come home drunk and beat up Vikash.
One day, when Vikash couldn’t bear the regular beating, before his father could return home ran away from home. He was caught by the Police on CST railway station and was put in the New Observation Home at Mankhurd. After some time, he was transferred to the Chembur Children’s home by the Child Welfare Committee and admitted in the fourth grade. On February 2019 he was admitted in Sahaara remedial class by CCH authority. When Vikash first came to Sahaara he was extremely quiet and dull. He couldn’t understand much and would therefore sleep in class, as he didn’t go to school when he was back home.
At Sahaara We encourage Vikash to study well, we have even put him in special help classes where the teacher teaches only five children at a time to be able to provide individual attention to the children. The teacher is teaching Vikash from scratch with numbers and alphabets using flashcards and different games, to which Vikash is responding very well and picks up quickly what is taught. This made him interested in studies and began doing well. So much so that the teacher made him the monitor of the special help class and gave him responsibilities to distribute books and help the teacher. This helped build his confidence. The teacher has made a behavior chart and has put it up in class. Vikash now want his name to come in chart, so he’s constantly trying to improve his behavior.
Vikash now enjoys his studies and doesn’t sleep in class anymore. He loves studying and is now able to read Marathi letters. His aim is to be able to cope up with the syllabus so he focuses on his studies and comes to class every day.
*Name changed to protect identity.
By Rahul Thomas | Head of Operations - Programs
By Rahul Thomas | Senior Manager-Operations and Donor Relations
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