Ex-students initiative to support poor students

Rubina Khatun is in Class III. She works as a domestic help in the morning, comes to school and gets back to work again in the evening. Though she wants to pursue higher studies, she may not be able to take her Madhyamik examinations. “Amader khamata nei (we cannot afford it),” says the 12-year-old girl. The story is similar for many students in the schools of Vivekananda Education Society, in Jagaddal and Sonarpur, South 24-Parganas. In 1996, the Society had started a non-formal school in a clubhouse in Jagaddal without any infrastructure. The aim was to give underprivileged children in the areas a chance to receive an education. “There was no provision for mid-day meals for them, we only looked after the education part,” explained Saikat Basu, secretary of the Society, who is also a teacher at Narendrapur Ramakrishna Mission. That is when a handful of ex-students of Ramakrishna Mission took the initiative to scale up the project.

Read more. [Source: Telegraph]
Read more!