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Making nomadic children 100% literate by 2020 is her mission.
While working with the Gadiya Lohar community in Agra, Dr. Chowdhary realised that education could pull the community out of abject poverty. With no school attendees out of 5000 families, she faced an uphill task convincing parents to send their children. She aims 100% literacy for the children of t
As wave upon wave of reforms have been initiated by various governments in diverse sectors, however, there seems to be a section of the society which is forever untouched by the reforms. They are the nomadic tribes which are one of the most backward parts of the Indian society. Living at the fringes of our society, the ‘Gadiya Lohar’ community forms 7% of our total population.
A recent survey, pegs the number of people in the Gadiya Lohar community in Agra at around 5000. Bereft of any permanent accommodation, they have built temporary shelters for themselves from wagons. The community has hundreds of children of school-going age, however none of them attend school due to the unwillingness of schools to take them in due to their poverty and due to reluctance of parents to get their child admitted in school.
Dr Hridyesh Chowdhary, General Secretary of NGO Aradhana, says that she has had an opportunity to observe this community closely as she has spent close to 4 years roaming among these nomadic tribes collecting valuable data on their lifestyles. It was sometimes during these 4 years that she realised that education could help lift this community out of depravity. Urged by this motivation, she toiled to convince families of about 150 children to send their children to a school specially for providing free education to nomadic children.
As an additional incentive to the parents of the community, the school is operating special vans to ferry children to and from school from different parts of the city. This simple move has filled the parents with confidence as transport was their biggest concern. Dr. Chowdhary has pledged to make every nomadic child from Agra literate by 2020.
Social activist and poet Pawan Aagri shared that besides nomadic children, Dr Chowdhary also works for the upliftment of child beggars and that currently around two dozen such former beggars are now gaining education in her school.
Dr. Chowdhary has opened her NGO after resigning as a teacher from the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya and has been continuously operating it since the past 4 years. Aagri was hopeful that with the power of education by their side, the Gadiya Lohar community will soon be reintegrated into a society.
* Read the original story by Siraj Qureshi on www.indiatoday.in