Inspiration
In this UP village, a school is willing to go out of the way for the girl child
‘Project Mala’ in the Guria village of Uttar Pradesh is working overtime to keep children in school free of caste and other discriminations. It is batting for its girl students and encouraging them to not only complete their studies but also work towards a career.
It is always a welcome change to discover pockets of India which for all reasons are ignored but shoot into the limelight due to the inspiring and trail blazing work done in the field of education. Come let’s discover another such pocket in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, just off the GT Road between Varanasi and Allahabad in a dusty little village called Guria. This is a traditional farming and carpet weaving village with most adults engaged in either of the 2 occupations.
This village houses ‘Project Mala’, a program run with the specific aim of eliminating child labour, by providing education, mid-day meals and healthcare facilities for children in this carpet weaving belt.
The school has a very unique approach of keeping the shadow of class, caste, societal, and sartorial pressures at bay. Primary school students are encouraged to be in their classrooms barefoot. They are also not referred to by their family names.
This school is fast becoming the first choice of villagers who do not want to miss the opportunity to educate their children here. The school receives 500 applications for every 10 seats; however, the number of boy applicants exceeds girls.
Some years ago when it was decided to open a nursery school for younger children, 300 boys lined up outside the school for admission and not a single girl child. The school then boldly decided to make the class only for girls.
Recognising that most dropouts happen at the class VIII stage, bicycles are provided to students to stem the dropout rate. The school has also created a girls’ hostel. These signs are slowly but steadily converting some families.
However, typical of an obscure village, retaining girls in school is as tough fight. Parents want to get them married post middle school. Another socio-geographical reality of the area is that parents are reluctant to send girls to school once they hit puberty fearing their safety, especially if they have to walk to school.
The school also has a positive local economic impact as it assists the local carpenter’s earnings who make and maintain the school furniture. They mostly work in one part of the schoolyard. In fact, local tailors are also enlisted to make school uniforms and have a small workspace within the school itself like the carpenters.
The erratic electricity supply of the hinterland is not a dampener. Everyone turns up as per the time table.
The school doesn’t have to search far for filling up its teacher vacancies. Local teachers are first hired as staff and then trained by volunteers of Project Mala to hone their teaching skills and to be sensitive to the children’s developmental needs. Most of the girls want to become teachers and doctors, while the boys, engineers.
The teacher’s role is not limited to only teaching inside the classrooms or guiding the students on their career path. Here teachers play a very important role beyond the classrooms as well. For instance, parents of a bright student wanted to get her married of as soon as she passed out of school. Unable to do something about it, she came to school seeking for help and the teachers intervened. Today, she is pursuing a degree in the Sciences stream in Allahabad.
Despite almost impossible odds, it is heartening to see that even the remotest of villages in the country are not untouched by the winds of change. From abject poverty to opportunities like this, most children now have aspirations of a career so that they are self-reliant and can look after their families.