TO BE OR NOT TO BE

The basic reason behind poor and underprivileged kids dropping out of school is that the parents think kids are not gaining much out of it. Instead they think it is better that they help them out with domestic chores and other household works.

This story is about Sunita, whose parents stopped her schooling exactly due to these reasons. Five years after, a local NGO, conducted a door to door search for potential school girls. Field staff of the NGO found Sunita and few of her friends who had dropped out of the school.

People of NGO visited her homes and urged the families to send Sunita to school. But since parent’s previous experience with the school and schooling was not so overwhelming so they straight shut the doors off. Reason of this door shut policy was that they thought education was in no way going to contribute to kids life after marriage. Since she had to do all these domestic chores she was taught @ home. Worse, they thought if kids got educated, they would probably elope with their new found freedom and education.

Staff gathered villagers from nearby places and took the parents to show Kasturba Gandhi Ballika Vidyalaya (KGBV) which was an all girls residential school with all women teaching and non teaching staff. They showed them the residential complex as well as school and classrooms. They made them understand as to how much world around them had changed and the value of education in uplifting the life of kids like Sunita.

Today Sunita and her sister both study in the school learning the basics of English Grammar and more importantly looking upto a bright future with smiles in their faces.

SUNITA WANTS TO BECOME A TEACHER

*Sunita is a fictional name.