A couple chucks white-collar comfort to spread vidya

Every year, whenever they can sneak out of busy city schedules, Supriya and Rahul Akhaury love to fill up the tank, take their car and go places, visiting friends and family. The extra miles on their odometer is always a relief. Just that it happens only rarely. But it isn’t the driving or talk of their trips that brings a sparkle to this couple’s eyes. Nor are they excited about their professional pedigrees—Supriya is a chartered accountant and Rahul an engineer and an mba from iim, Bangalore. Talk of happy marriages and the couple claims the secret of marital bliss is something else. They believe in reaching out, reaching out to those who need education but have no access to it.

They are zealots, they say, when it comes to making a difference in the lives of the 60-odd children of Ambedkar Vihar, a harijan basti in Noida, near Delhi. Call them surrogate parents to the children of domestic servants, rickshaw pullers and street vendors, and the couple starts off on a never-ending monologue on "Vidya and Child", a two-room school set up in the area under the auspices of the Jai Prakash Narayan Memorial Trust in July 1998.

Says 30-year-old Supriya: "It’s all about preparing the child for a formalised schooling system. Our objective is to initiate a child into the educational process, which is then carried forward to supporting him in a formal school till Class XII. Both parent and child are motivated into visualising a purposeful future and a meaningful role in our society." Since its inception, Vidya and Child has got thirteen students admitted to some of the reputed schools in Noida. All of them appeared for the admission tests and cleared it.

There was no obvious immediate catalyst to the beginning of Vidya and Child. It all started with informal tuitions to Supriya’s maidservant’s daughter about three years ago. The number of children just kept growing—to a situation when the couple started feeling the space crunch. As she says: "My mother runs a school for blind girls in Ranchi, and I grew up in a similar atmosphere. So it was nothing new for me to start something like this... and Rahul was only too willing to be there and help me out. We soon realised the school gave us much more satisfaction than what we could have possibly achieved, working in an mnc or any other place." Buoyed by the idea of starting something of their own, the couple didn’t think twice before chucking a promising professional future.

Vidya and Child’s philosophy is simple. After counselling the parents about the importance of education, a committed group of about nine teachers hold preparatory classes for the children in groups of six or seven. In the second phase, the child is admitted to a recognised school and his educational expenses are aided by the project. "The parents contribute a marginal amount in order to ensure that they too acquire a sense of commitment and involvement in their child’s education," says Rahul. Each child again attends classes in the evening at the project centre so that they are monitored on a daily basis. They are guided here in their homework and exams, apart from working on extra-curricular skills like dancing, painting etc.

Says Rahul: "The experience has been very fulfilling. The children’s eagerness to learn is of course the contributing factor." Adds Supriya: "They are much more aware of their situation than our children who live a sheltered life. They are also street-smart, acknowledging the fact that someone is caring for them. I would say they are perhaps much more intelligent than what we were." Take for instance five-year-old Tumpa Biswas, a housemaid’s daughter, and six-year-old Ankit Sarkar, a street-vendor’s son. Ankit was a rag-picker before joining Vidya and Child a year ago. Both of them have got out-of-turn promotions to the next class, thanks to excellent performances at the regular school.

With a committed group of teachers, the school runs entirely on donations from like-minded people. "We try not to mix our professions with the school. We don’t ask clients for help," they say. Funds haven’t been a problem. The trust has no corpus of its own, but there’s no shortage of people willing to lend a helping hand. Vidya and Child can be contacted at: Jai Prakash Narayan Memorial Trust, 1858, Brahmaputra Apartments, Sector 29, Noida—201303; Ph: 91-11-84452116; e-mail: akhaury@vsnl.com