Sunday, March 15, 2009

Pavement School Two launched today!!!!














Today we flagged off Pavement School Two. With the help of Mr Jagdeep Dighe and his wife, Mr Raut, Mr Nadar, Ramnikbhai, Charu Sir (a resident music teacher who has kindly helped us with locating teachers for the school, and offered us his premises to store the school material after class everyday) and his wife, and the local Shiv Sena Shakha Pramukh Raju Padhye were present along with the teachers. From the India Helps team, Priyanka (who is truly the driving force in the pavement school initiative), Renu and Sumita, apart from yours truly were present. We had around 15 new students at last count, which was most heartening, apart from that we had people stop by and offer their help in any way. A resident balwadi teacher stopped by and began teaching the children, a gentleman got off from his car and offered sponsorship, the response on the first day was most encouraging and heartening. Most touching to me, personally, was the uncontained excitement on the faces of the children who had come in from the slums opposite. Ramnikbhai had brought along some uniform tshirts which we distributed, apart from notebooks, and everyone involved had brought along some snacks which we distributed to the kids. Jalebis, pedas, some farsan, chanas, bananas, they had a hearty breakfast.
This school is outside the ICICI bank, on the pavement, located right after the Bangur Nagar signal on Goregaon Link Road. The school will be open Mondays to Saturdays 8 am to 10 am. Anyone who would like to teach the kids, offer them snacks or just drop in is welcome.
On Saturday, Priyanka and I met with Smitha Verma of The Telegraph at the Pavement School opposite Vibgyor, and she accompanied us into the slums nearby where we went in for a short round of canvassing to inform people living there about this school and to request them to send their children there on Monday.
Pictures will be up shortly.
Anyone wanting to help out in anyway for either of our pavement schools, please do write in at indiahelps@gmail.com or info@indiahelps.org.

2 comments:

sscribbles said...

Good going guys!!!

Anonymous said...

Its truely inspiring, (thanks to prachi- one of the founder members, who gave me a opportunity). As I read, my conscience is asking me...out of 8760 hours (365 days *24 hr) cann't we spear a few hours for this noble cause..