All posts by : Anush

Who Are IDPs?

This group has been defined as “People who may have been forced to flee their homes for the same reasons as refugees but they have not crossed an international border.” Unlike refugees, IDPs have not crossed international borders in search of protection. They are displaced from their homes but are still within the jurisdiction of their government, this means that it is still their national government that is responsible for their protection.

Where can they be found? Near your house, near your colony. They sleep on the footpath, near traffic lights, and their children are mostly never able to attend schools.

What do they do? Mostly, they might have to resort to begging.

What are some issues they face? They even don’t access to basic things like water, shelter, food, health facility, education, and whatever more you can think of.

They are not covered under the Refugee Convention and they are not a part of the voting population—so politicians do not bother to recognise them.

Why I am writing about this? 

I am teaching in a slum in Jaipur under an initiative by the name of Suraksha for about a year now with my friends. The families who we are teaching still don’t have lights in their house, some of them don’t even have a house. They live in a jhuggi (a small hut with plastic cover), they don’t have access to water (not even for drinking), they don’t hope for education for their child.

Even after approaching concerned government authorities we are unable to provide them water which is a shame in the name of human rights.

They want your help your hand so that they can drink water properly. My appeal is for you to please go to places near your house and see the situation, and help them.

Illiteracy is an injury to our nation’s development and a blemish on the future of our kids

And, so was the case of Tima and Sandeep. Tima is an intelligent five – year old girl who sings alphabet, Hindi words, names of weeks and months, and what not while we were busy singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars” at that age. Sandeep is an 8-year-old boy who knows much beyond his age. And these are just the names. Just like everyone, we wanted to do something for society.

Only studying won’t fulfill our purpose. Since it is said that charity begins at home, we started with our initiative – SURAKSHA in Jaipur itself.

Project Suraksha is an initiative that started with door to door collection of old winter clothes in Jaipur during Diwali where we got more than 10,000 clothes in just 3 weeks and turned up into our drive to teach underprivileged kids.

We started this initiative in early October, with a handful of people in the team. For the collection of clothes, we used to visit public parks and other places every morning, urging people to donate their old winter clothes. Gradually with the expanse of our team, we managed to cover almost every public park and were able to collect clothes from every corner of the city. We segregated, packed and distributed those clothes in 17 slums of the city.

One day during our distribution drive in a slum, we heard the voice of an old man, who was resident of that slum saying “Sahab inko padha bhi do”.

His voice and the noble idea got stuck in the minds of our team members. As a result, post the cloth distribution drive, we adopted a small slum at Sahakar Marg Road and started setting up an open classroom for the kids of that slum. To our shock, we found that most of the kids of that slum were forced into begging activities. Every “Chotu” on traffic signal who begs for money, comes from such slums only.

Teaching is a service and not a transaction, this is motivated us to teach these children.

The idea was to bring a fundamental change, so our team started taking classes for bridging the education gap among kids of different age groups so that they can be admitted to a school in the next academic session. There is a famous saying that “Children are the future of the Nation”, so this future can be secured only when these children go to school instead of dropping by on every vehicle at traffic signals.

It has been more than 5 years since we started the project, but the progress was immense. The students developed a zeal to achieve and came out with flying colors. While teaching, we came face to face with the ground reality of these kids which we are generally unable to see except on media. There were problems like unavailability of water, sanitation, etc. This again forced us to think more and expand our horizon to resolve their issues. Our team managed to arrange a water tank and regular water supply from the municipal corporation.

The best part of this project which keeps our spirits and motivation high is our team which started just as a random group but turned out to be a blockbuster. We withstood all the ravages and made our grip on the goal stronger and stronger. People got attracted to our vision to make a difference in the society and supported our cause in one way or the other by providing milk – bread once in a week or providing stationery, and even by helping us in teaching.

And now, our initiative got into the shape which we wanted it to be in. These kids are finally admitted into a school where they’ll not only learn to study but will also learn the basics of life that they always desired to learn.

It is said that education is the key to success. So, we are trying to provide them with the key to a more beautiful world where they’ll be able to achieve their dreams.

And we are still trying our best to bring changes in more and more lives by helping and contributing to a greater cause of nation-building.

https://www.exambazaar.com/blogpost/project-suraksha-teach-underprivileged-children-jaipur