Non-formal education for 700 kids
Hamirpur, Uttar Pradesh: The children of Bidokhar village, 13 kms south of Bharua Sumerpur block of Hamipur district in Uttar Pradesh, call it Apna Skool.
Bidokhar is a sprawling village in Bundelkhand with a population of nearly 10,000 and a highly hierarchical society. But Apna Skool is different.
The school caters to children whose parents migrate to Kanpur every year for one season to work in brick kilns in the suburbs.
The school, run by Jagriti, an NGO formed by the faculty and students of IIT Kanpur at the Panchayat Bhawan of the village, seems to have provided a lasting answer to the challenge of helping these children who go with their parents to distant work places and don't have access to any form of education.
Jagriti has been running education centers for these children near the brick kilns around the IIT campus on the outskirts of Kanpur for more than a decade. The two-dozen centres run by it currently provide non-formal education to 700 children.
Text & Images: Sify
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