Inspiration
Mittal Patel: Works tirelessly to ensure the children of Nomadic and De-Notified Tribes their right to education
Our series “Teacher Warriors” honours some of the country’s best and bravest teacher warriors, striving to give kids a fighting chance at a better present and a future floating with possibilities. In the eighth episode, Nichola Pais speaks to Mittal Patel, founder, Vicharta Samuday Samarthan Manch
Our series "Teacher Warriors" honours some of the country’s best and bravest teacher warriors, striving to give kids a fighting chance at a better present and a future floating with possibilities. In the eighth episode, Nichola Pais speaks to Mittal Patel, founder, Vicharta Samuday Samarthan Manch (VSSM), Gujarat:
“Even after 69 years of Independence, they live a life of slaves – slaves of their fate, lost in desolation,” says Mittal Patel. With government authorities and bureaucrats largely unconcerned about the issues and maintaining a calculated distance from these communities, their basic rights have been blatantly disregarded for too long, their very existence denied. But not any longer…Under the umbrella of Vicharta Samuday Samarthan Manch (VSSM), Mittal and her committed team strive to give social identity, citizen’s rights, education, health facilities, housing and livelihood options to the various communities of Nomadic Tribes and De-Notified Tribes (NT-DNTs).
VSSM has reached out to more than 30,000 families from more than 1000 settlements in 18 districts. They work with 40 different communities from NT-DNTs. Their work has borne fruit in the barren, poverty-stricken world of the once-nameless, faceless nomads. Over the years, more than 5000 families were helped to make ration cards, 70,000 individuals acquired voter ID cards, residential plots were allotted to 1000 families, construction of houses for 300 families was supported, vocational training was provided to 396 individuals and more than 1150 interest-free loans were given to start businesses or for other requirements. More hearteningly, VSSM has educated large numbers of nomad children – more than 300 children currently stay in two hostels run by the organisation.
What, in a nutshell, is your mission at Vicharta Samuday Samarthan Manch (VSSM)?
Our mission at VSSM is to enable the communities of nomadic and de-notified tribes attain and lead a life of dignity. We want to ensure that all the children from NT-DNTs enjoy their fundamental Right to Education. We work to enable these communities to avail of their fundamental rights and entitlements. Facilitating the creation of alternate employment opportunities in lieu of the traditional occupations that have been rendered obsolete with time, is what we strive to do. Our objective is to ensure that the NT-DNTs acquire a roof, a place to settle and get an address of their own.
How does VSSM go about educating the disadvantaged children of these communities?
We have a two-pronged approach:
Bridge School: The experience of working with these communities made me realise that the literacy level in Nomadic and De-Notified Tribes Communities is very low. Thus, a greater emphasis on orientation of children toward education is necessary to realise our goal as an organisation. Primarily, we run Bridge Schools within their settlements where children are introduced to the current education system. Once the children are prepared, we enrol them in regular schools.
Hostels: Once the children are ready to be enrolled and their parents are adequately sensitised, the children are brought to VSSM run hostels where their future can be properly moulded for future challenges. The aim of hostels is to provide a conducive, education-friendly environment. All these efforts are destined to realise the mission of making these children an example for others from the community that only literacy can
resolve the long impounding drudgery they have been enduring.
The challenges must be many…
The biggest challenge was sensitising the parents of these children to the importance of education. The main reason being, these communities never
had any exposure to the present trends. Neither had they felt the necessity of education, as these children do not have an academics-friendly home environment. Due to absence of literacy, sometimes it becomes troublesome to convince them even for silly matters while some complicated matters, which we feel would demand much effort, require no effort! This uncertain behaviour within all these communities requires us to plan our efforts and interventions coherently.
On other hand, the political and social apathy towards these communities plays a role of fuel to the fire. Society in general, does not carry a healthy and empathising opinion towards them while large section of society, bureaucrats, and government authorities carry a negative approach towards most of them. Our major efforts are wasted in convincing them to extend a hand of amity… but largely in vain.
This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue as a part of our cover story on Teacher Warriors. Subscribe to ScooNews Magazine today to have more such stories delivered to your desk every month.
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Images courtesy – Mittal Patel