News
Rajesh Kumar Sharma takes the initiative to educate the poor
Rajesh Kumar Sharma and his staff take the responsibility to educate the poor
"Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality."
46-year-old Rajesh Kumar Sharma stands true to this saying. Early morning he heads to a metro bridge in East Delhi, before opening his grocery shop. Under the bridge runs a free school. The school has no walls, the pillars of the bridge are the only boundary.
There, 300 children- mostly from improvised migrant labourers or daily wage workers and seasonal farmers, get a chance to get educated. He didn't want a generation to lose out just because they are poor.
"I started this school in 2006 and this year we are celebrating 10 years of the school," Rajesh explains. "I could not become an engineer because of financial constraints. I had to drop out of college. Through these children I get to live my dream," he says.
Some of the students are enrolled in the nearby government schools. For them, free school under the bridge provides additional tuitions in Mathematics, English, Hindi, Science, History and any other subject that they face problem in.
The school runs two sessions a day – two hours for boys in the morning and two hours for the 120 girls who attend in the afternoon.
"In government schools, boys have to attend the afternoon batch, so they attend our free school in the morning and after that go to their government schools while girls attend government schools in the morning and they come to our school in the afternoon." he explains.
Before the class begins, every morning, the students sweep the floors. The students sit on donated mats, while the teachers use donated plastic chairs. Two steel trunks store the attendance registers and other paperwork. Each student who attends the classes is registered with their name and photograph. Every Saturday the students are made to do physical exercises which keeps them active.
The son of a daily wage labourer from the Indian state of Bihar, Laxmi Chandra teaches mathematics and science at the school. He believes poverty can drive children to crime.
"I have been teaching here since 2011 and back home I have seen how, due to poverty, children got into all sorts of wrong things," he says. "They need guidance and that's what we try to give them here through education, so that they can have a bright future."
Kanchan Yadav is a volunteer teacher at the school. She says "I want these children to grow and make a career. They shouldn't stop because of their poor financial conditions."
This school is a blessing in disguise to all the poor families who cannot afford education. We congratulate Rajesh Kumar Sharma and his team for taking a step in educating the youth.
Image Courtesy: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2016/05/day-delhi-bridge-school-poor-160511154423330.html