Spreading the light

Two-room school in Delhi educates the underprivileged

Open drains, heaps of rotting refuse, yelping dogs, the crowd and the general chaos are a typical feature of every lane and bylane of Ambedkar Vihar, a small shanty settlement in Noida near New Delhi, India.

In this melee that breeds neglect, disease and despair one organisation has taken upon itself the responsibility of ensuring that at least the children of this locality remain untouched by the hopelessness around them and step confidently into the mainstream.

The organisation, Vidya and Child hopes to achieve this through education. Run by a young couple, Supriya and Rahul Akhaury, the educational organisation caters to the children of poor labourers, rickshaw-pullers, domestic servants, vendors etc of this area.

"The idea is to educate and prepare these children so that they can qualify to enter the mainstream educational system,'' says Supriya, a young chartered accountant who started Vidya and Child in December 1998 along with her husband Rahul, an engineer and an MBA.

The children are provided free education and the poor parents of these children are more than happy to send their children to Vidya and Child. The organisation has over 65 children from the age group of five to 15.

It has 11 teachers some of whom teach on a voluntary basis. The school is run from two–rooms in this locality in two shifts, the morning shift catering to the juniors and the evening to the senior students.

With the number of students increasing there is a noticeable space crunch. Three classes with two teachers function from one room at the moment. The couple are on a look out for more accommodation in the colony itself as they think a school in the colony would ensure a close interaction between the children, parents and the teachers.

The school has no corpus fund of its own and runs on donations from relatives and friends. The idea for doing something like this was already there says Supriya and Rahul but what and how they'd do it was governed by circumstances.

The idea for the school grew from Supriya's home tuitions to her maid-servants' daughter. From one student the children multiplied and it struck us why not open a school for these kids, says Supriya.

Supriya and Rahul keep a personal tab on each student in their small school. "If a child is absent from school we try to investigate why he's not coming. He could be sick needing a doctor.

So we approach the parents with help so that he can attend school as soon as possible,'' says Supriya.

The school has managed to secure admissions of 13 children into recognised public schools recently. All the children passed the admission tests and secured the admission on merit. "This is our sole objective to be able to secure a place for these deprived children into good schools,'' says Rahul.

Once they are there the school Vidya and Child does not wash its hands off the kids but besides the educational expenses an account on the progress of the children is kept and the necessary support given where required.

As for their own careers the couple now practise privately dividing their time between their philanthropic activities and their clients.