Educating slum kids, academically and morally

According to the epic Ramayana, Diwali marks the return of Lord Ram and his wife Sita to Ayodhya after winning a battle against Ravana in Lanka. The day is celebrated with fervour, lights and in today’s times – crackers. However, behind the momentary joy of bursting crackers lies the evil of child labour and pollution. And this evil is what a group of children fought this year during the festival through a nukkad naatak to educate people about how their habits are perpetuating a deplorable fireworks industry.

The children, as young as seven years old, from Super School India (SSI), a city-based NGO staged the street play in Saket recently, while also pledging that they would never burst crackers. The storyline started with Ram and Sita returning to India after defeating evil in Lanka only to find that their countrymen are also promoting evil by forcing children to work in fireworks factories.

“The naatak wanted to help the kids (actors and audience) understand in an interactive way that while they have the privilege to go to a school, some kids their age are working in factories, suffering from severe health issues. And their tiny sacrifice of giving up crackers can lead to a positive change in the lives of many unfortunate children,” SSI founder Radhika Mittal tells Metrolife.

Started in 2014, SSI was conceptualised when Mittal grew disillusioned of her desk job and privileged life in Singapore and moved back to Delhi to see if she could do something here. “I started teaching a few kids on Sundays (they asked me to teach them when they came to my house for Asthmi), and the school grew with each passing Sunday. And a year on - we conduct classes four times a week for 100 kids with six volunteers,” she says.

She adds that the main idea behind SSI, which is a free school for underprivileged kids in Saket, is to equip them with the right learning tools to process academic information (versus ratta-fication), and to inculcate in them a sense of morality and civic sense.

“Textbook education doesn’t ensure you will be a good person, morality and civic sense does. Lots of these kids are never told about good habits. Their parents just don’t have the time. Where else will you learn that you must not litter, or spit or pee in public or what it means to be honest. Along with education, India needs a lesson in morality,” she says.

Mittal, who believes that education and investing in citizens is the key to being a developed country, says that another reason behind setting up SSI was to make her neighbourhood “more secure”.

“The answer to problems in societies, in my opinion, is community action. If we just focus on our immediate surroundings and try to make it better for everyone who lives in it, then we have also made our neighbourhood safer. I live very close to Sangam Vihar, which has a huge drug abuse problem, and many kids are falling prey to it. I wanted to create a space where I could talk to the kids about everything good in life and tell them if they ever felt like nothing was going right for them, I and the volunteers are there for them. That no situation is bad enough for them to turn to drugs or crime,” she adds.

SSI is open to anyone who assures the team of full attendance and turns up on time. Mittal says that the rest - like discipline and grades - can be worked on. The kids, most of whom who come from nearly slum areas, are taught English and Mathematics, general knowledge, morality and civic sense through activities, videos and discussions. “At SSI, apart from educating the 100 kids who come to us, we want to make them change makers who go on to educate others around them. Domino effect,” she says.

They are also engaged in other activities like dance competitions, art sessions, yoga, and most recently the street play that they prepared and performed for over 1,300 people.

Though the school had its share of challenges like poor attendance and not being taken seriously, Mittal says that their efforts have not gone in vain as the students today “don’t litter, they say thank you and please, speak politely, swear lesser and have improved ties with their families”.

“Academically, we have seen a drastic improvement in the basic understanding of Math concepts. English, however, has been tricky because it is more difficult to teach. We are working on shifting more attention to English. We have also established a rapport with the parents, which is why they have opened up to us about their problems. This gives an insight into why a child may be underperforming or misbehaving and provides us with an opportunity to solve the problem at its root,” she says.