Barefoot Dreams In The Park

Over the past decade, the Don Bosco Youth Mission and Educational Services (DBYES), which Fr Thomas heads, has initiated many projects to educate and train scores of youth, in both formal schools and at informal youth development centres. But two experiments stand out: the Bosco Barefoot College (BBC) which helps empower school dropouts from the Northeast’s rural areas and the UNICEF-supported Deprived Urban Children (DUC) programme. The latter aims at getting as many of the 20,000 out-of-school children in Guwahati into classrooms.

The idea of a ‘barefoot’ college struck Fr Thomas after his first visit to Boko, a completely rural setting 60 km out of Guwahati. "Many here are school dropouts, semi-literates left behind in the march of progress. This has generated deep-seated frustration, frequently finding expression in violence. There was a need for empowering these youths, for a job-oriented, skill-based and work-oriented educational institute," Fr Thomas says. The rural location was deliberate since the plan was to help the youth learn life-sustaining skills like modern agricultural practices, animal husbandry, electrical wiring, carpentry and masonry, candle-making, tailoring and screen-printing in settings familiar to them. Each batch (about 25 drawn from all around the Northeast) takes part in a six-week training course. In four years, the BBC has got over 400 fit for employment.

The Deprived Urban Children project in Guwahati is also something that Fr VM—as Thomas is fondly known—derives a lot of satisfaction from. Conceptualised by DBYES and supported by UNICEF in collaboration with the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Assam, the project has got over 1,200 children in the 5-14 age group into classrooms over the past one year. Almost all live in slums and have never been to school before. The project—a modified version of similar programmes in Calcutta and Baroda—aims at running a ‘bridge course’ or an accelerated teaching-learning process which helps overaged children catch up and join the mainstream in local schools. When it was first taken up, a baseline survey revealed that at least 20,000 children didn’t attend school across the city. The programme has been so effective it’s been extended to other parts of Guwahati.

Meanwhile, on the banks of the Brahmaputra, Fr Thomas’ next dream project is taking shape, the Don Bosco Institute, "a combination of management training centre and youth development institute". Once it comes up, Northeast-based firms will no longer have to send executives outside the region for in-service training. There will also be various part- and full-time courses like computers, mass communications, spoken English etc for the youth. As in previous projects, Fr Thomas is confident of realising the DBYES motto here too—"Shaping lives, building dreams." For more details on DBYES, contact: Fr V.M. Thomas, director, DBYES, Don Bosco, Guwahati-781001. Ph: 0361-2523222. e-mail: vmtom@vsnl. com