By Jithin Krishnan | Project Head
There are two ways you know you're going in the right direction with your project. One is the endless number of dashboards and excel sheets with numbers and impact data lined up into neatly divided rows and columns.
The other, and my personal favourite, would be the stories that you hear of amazing children and volunteers from on-ground. No matter how impossible a task as large as literacy may seem, these stories, they always give you hope.
For example, a volunteer from Nagpur turned up for class with a fractured leg a couple of weeks back. The center she works with, is quite some distance away and travel is never easy. On entering her classroom, she was bombarded with questions on when and how she fractured her leg; why she turned up to her class and if she's been taking care of herself.
Asking her what energizes her to travel so far, she answers - "The smile on their faces makes this pain go away so happily!" Adding to it, she says, "There is no doubt that I'm coming here next weekend too!"
Or take Gurtej from Mumbai. We encourage teachers to use as many tools as possible to make learning more fun and interactive. Gurtej took a cue from it and took it to the next level.
In his recent endeavors, Gurtej brought the Pulse of Mumbai – The Indian Railways into his classrooms as a motivational tool. From Virar to Churchgate, his 10 children go through a journey of obstacles in the form of tests and win numerous goodies on the way. The grand part of this challenge is, whoever reaches the Churchgate Station first, becomes ‘Student of the Year’. Gurtej’s strengths lie in his innovative ideas and undeterred faith in the ability of his children. Together as a team, they will make it to their final destination with flying colors, we hope.
And then. Then there are those who have been with MAD and have moved on, and are doing fantastically well for themselves. Jobish Matthew and Gauthaman Prasad were two of MAD's first students all the way back in 2006. Jobish just finished his one-year with the US State Department's prestigious 'Community College Initiative Program' and Gauthaman is participating in the programme this year.
One of our volunteers in Chennai, met these two young men one fine day, and this is what she wrote after:
"On my right is Jobish Mathew and on my left is Gauthaman. These are two people I have immense respect and admiration for. Two of the first ever MAD students, these boys have stepped out of their path and landed on success with their hard work and determination. Today, Jobish has returned from the USA after successfully completing his scholarship based Info Tech course at Gadsden, he looks to apply for further scholarships and become an IT guy.
Gauthaman, got through at Illinois with full Scholarship and received his US Visa just today. Having spent the evening with them, I realized how far they have come and how much further they are geared to go.
Watching Jobish coach Gauthaman, telling him the difference between a dollar and a cent, showing him all possible American currency, giving him a book that explains the American culture and saying that sandwiches will be a way of life, so he better get used to them, it was almost surreal.
Gauthaman told me that he'd like to take his mother to the US one day. When we were talking, sitting in his train back to Cochin, he came across as a confident, respectable young man who knew where he was headed. The feeling that hit me that moment was, THIS IS THE DREAM. I'M LIVING IT.
There are over a million more dreams to live and those children have await us back at our centers. These boys have started a legacy, and our children will continue it.
Watching the train leave, as I signed a best of luck to Gauthaman, I had tears in my eyes. Just. Happy, I guess."
But even more reassuring is how the community has endorsed our drive to educate and uplift these children. On September 8th, World Literacy Day, we organized a massive pan-India Back-a-thon (where instead of running or walking, you walk backward). The idea was to celebrate 'pushing illiteracy backwards'. We were quite amazed when about 3000 people across 18 cities turned up to push illiteracy backward with us.
From here, there is only one way to go. Forward.
And we are just raring to go!
Links:
By Rajesh Varghese | Director
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