Bringing cheer to children of migrants

 Give someone a fish and he eats for a day, teach someone to fish and he eats for a lifetime — it is this that Niranjan, a University of Hyderabad student set out to do when he started teaching children of migrant labourers at a school called Kartavya.

Running a school for children, most of whom are illiterate, counselling and persuading parents to send their wards, tutoring the kids in the evenings and raising funds was not an easy job for Niranjan. “It took a long time and a lot of patience to get going,” says Niranjan, who is doing a five-year integrated master’s course in physics.

But Kartavya was not Niranjan’s brainchild. It was an initiative of students of Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, who started teaching children of the people residing in a nearby basti almost a decade ago. Niranjan, an ex-ISM, brought the idea with him to Hyderabad when he shifted.

Initially he along with his friends supplemented the salary of a teacher of a school for migrant labourers’ children. In 2007 they set up a day school and put two teachers in place. The day school does not run anymore as the labourers have moved out. But the tutoring continues in the evenings.

Niranjan admits he gives more importance to Kartavya than academics. But he does not see it as a service. “We can never hope to make a difference with scores of children who move away after sometime. But at the end, we understand more than we can ever hope to learn through textbooks and laptops.
For more info- http://expressbuzz.com/education/bringing-cheer-to-children-of-migrants/237958.html