Life was treating cost accountant Shobha, 40, fine till nine years ago when she joined USAid. Her job there entailed travelling wide and deep through the interiors and tribal areas of the country. It was then (through all of five years that she was on the job) that she learnt, first hand, what sheer economic deprivation did to people. Says she: "I saw that poverty, ignorance and exploitation were rampant." Shobha realised that all the suffering she encountered could be attributed to lack of awareness which, in turn, stemmed from lack of education.
She decided she wanted to bring education to the doorstep of the least privileged and she joined Child Relief and You in 1996 to gain first-hand experience in working for the underprivileged. Simultaneously, she, her colleague Sudhir Sudhal and S.S. Rao, a retired doctor, set up Arambh.
Shobha surveyed six Navi Mumbai municipal schools, covering semi-urban and rural areas. Several meetings with the education department led her to discover that getting children to school was only half the problem; that they continued there was the rest. The government was running incentive programmes to encourage enrolment but little was being done to help them stay on.
She began four study centres for these slum children, whose parents were mostly migrant labourers, to prepare them for school. In 1996, 330 children were identified and re-enrolled in zila parishad schools. She appointed two teachers per centre - typically girls below 20 from the community who had studied till seventh or eighth standard - to teach her first batch aged between five and nine years who had stopped going to school. The classes went on for two hours before or after school. She ensured that her teachers took on a one-year, part-time teachers' training course offered in Mumbai's sndt University.
The 1996 batch is still with her and has reached seventh standard. Her team has swollen in ranks with 12 to 15 new volunteers joining her. Some of them are students coming from better-off homes, professionals, housewives and retired teachers.
Shobha and her colleagues were keen that they effected a transformation in the overall living conditions of these children. So, Dr Rao started health check-ups for the children once a week. Health education classes for the mothers were also begun.
Arambh has gradually added co-curricular activities like excursions and drawing competitions to its curriculum. The parents of the slum children also chip in so that costs can be minimised. For instance, somebody will bring his rickshaw for transport.
Recently, Arambh has also taken on Hindi-medium teaching besides the existing Marathi-medium of instruction. Shobha's real success, however, is the change in attitude she has managed to bring about. She finds parents gradually becoming very conscious of continuing their children's education. "They actually come to me and ask me for leave instead of just disappearing as is typical of the community."
This has encouraged Arambh to begin a leadership training programme for teenage boys and girls from the slums. Short courses to develop skills like file- and chalk-making are run. Shobha's organisation also operates like a placement service for them. She has also started spoken English classes and a computer course for them. Says she: "We would like to bring them as close as possible to the privileged sections."
It's only for the past one year that cry has offered to help by giving them a regular donation. "But funds have never been a problem fortunately," says Shobha. People have been generous and have helped out in whatever way they can. She can be contacted at 022-7891050.
