She quit her government job to teach deprived kids
AGRA : Educating children from nomadic communities is not less than a challenge, their mobility and lack of awareness among their parent s towards education being the main hindrances.
Dr Hirdesh Chaudhary, who resigned as a central government teacher, not only took up the challenge but made it the purpose of her life. The children she taught came from the nomadic community of ‘gadia lohar’ or blacksmiths travelling in bullock carts from place to place, halting for a short duration alongside roads in cities.
Dr Chaudhary, who was employed at a Navodaya School run by the union ministry of human resources, came in contact with shabby children playing on the road side, during the summer vacation in 2011. The kids were from ‘gadia lohar’ community with no one bothering about their education.
“It motivated me to educate them under the umbrella of ‘Aaradhana’, my voluntary organization. We hired a van to collect these children who were taught for a few hours on our premises. It became a regular feature and more children came as we talked to their parents and motivated them to send their children to our classroom,” she recollected .
Mother of two school going children, Dr Chaudhary found support from husband KS Chaud- hary and the couple also began teaching children found begging on the road side.
Hirdesh resigned from her job in 2013 to fully dedicate herself to educate these children. The number grew and at present there are 200 students attending classes from nursery to Class 1.
“With their children getting education, the wandering blacksmiths have decided to stay in the city although they change their location as it is tough for them to stay at one place. We educate the kids with CBSE books till Class 1 and then get them admitted to mainstream schools. Some children have reached Class 5 in our seventh year of initiative,” Hirdesh said.
“We have to work hard on com- municating with and convincing the parents of these deprived children. A few drop out but we follow them and now we have multiple vans bringing them from locations all over the city. I still stop when I find a child begging on the road and try to contact his/her parents to get make the kid literate, ” said Hirdesh who has a master’s degree in education and a doctorate in Hindi literature.
“This drive has worked wonders for nomadic kids who would otherwise have remained illiterate. ‘Aaradhana’ gets support from donors who provide uniforms or books and even finance education of deprived kids in schools,” said Pawan Agri, a poet associated with ‘Aaradhana’.