Some words on education quality for children by Adithya Shanker- JUGNU core team

I aspire to work for change. The world is plagued with difficulties. I see myself working for solutions to tackle these problems. I am primarily concerned with Health, Education, Energy and Food.

I took up the work at Jugnu to give myself a head-start for my aspirations. Started working as a tutor for these children and now mostly look after the work at the learning centre. I mostly coordinate work with volunteers, mentor them, help them with their problems etc.

 I believe every child should be given equal opportunity in education. And every children should be given quality education with good moral values, especially primary children. Upon working closely at the ground level, I got to understand the problems due to which lots of children are deprived of education. I, along with my team, believe that we will bring change and certainly deliver a solution because of which we will see every children going to school. Along with this I see that through our initiative, lots of young, highly spirited individuals will take up issues to bring change to the society for good.

An inspirational story by Mr Kamal Kant Narang, Co founder- JUGNU

We always talk about living in a better society. But I often wondered, how and who was going to make the society a better place and then, one day I came across Mahatma Gandhi’s words,   “Be the change you want to see in the world” and it was then and there that I decided that I will take the first step to usher in the change that I wanted to see in the society. Well, the evil that i was going to address was something that is omnipresent and that we have only tried to neglect by closing our eyes towards what we come across in our daily lives.

While travelling by road ,at the red light, or on the street or on the railway platform ,we all find poor kids begging for money. Most of us would give them a rupee or two and then hush them away. But have we ever thought, if our  money is actually of any help to them in real sense and shouldn’t something be done so that they too can stand up on their own feet. Thinking on these lines I realized  that “It was better to make individuals out of these kids who were capable of earning their own bread rather than giving them some money” (kisi ko paise dene se behatar hai ki use us kaabil bana do ki wo do waqt ki roti kama kar kha sake). So I decided to do something to empower them ,so that they could lead a better life. I did my research, talked to various people ,scoured the net and  came to the conclusion that the most basic thing by which I could help them was  by providing them with GOOD EDUCATION. I decided to share this idea with my friend Mr. Anil Kumar Saini. We both agreed to work on this idea and  decided that first we should make a team and  carry out a  detailed survey in a certain colony comprising of lower middle class people. We zeroed in on the Shahbad Dairy slum area near our college. Me and Anil along with Mr. Parvesh , Mr. Nishant, Ms. Manisha  went there and  came to know that more than 95% of the children living there were  not going to school. We were shocked to know that instead of going to school they were involved in  rag picking. We talked to their parents and told them that education was the most important thing for a child, that they had no future and that they would find themselves in same economic situation ten years hence if they continued to work as rag pickers.   We made them realize how important it was for them  to send their children to school. Consequently, they got ready to send their children to schools. We went to the nearby government school talked to the school authorities and  got 60 children admitted in the school under the SSA(sarva shiksha abhiyaan) scheme.

Earlier before  the start of the  education campaign, one day when  I was in my college, I had a discussion with my friend Mr. Anil Kumar Saini on the issue of lack of proper clothing among the poor people  and we came up with the idea to carry out a cloth donation drive. By doing that at least  some of the people living on the streets could  get cloth to cover their body. With the efforts of our family and friends we made it successful.

 That campaign gave me confidence and  made me realize that  serving humanity is what gives you the real happiness and peace.Then, came the flood disaster in Uttarakhand , a lot of people needed help , and that was the time for us to  actively help our brothers and sisters trapped in Uttrakhand in every possible way. So we have arranged the required things such as water bottles, medicines, packed food from our colony via  the campaign and sent the same to Uttarakhand.

Having done all this, still, it seemed ,that I wasn’t doing enough and more could be done. The big problems of our society are   poverty and  unemployment  and as I said earlier , since the only solution to all these issues is  GOOD EDUCATION ,therefore I felt something more needed to be done to improve the literacy rate. This thought proved to be the turning point in our journey and we founded JUGNU- Let’s Make Everyone Shine, a society that works for the right to education…….

Our NGO, has set up tuition camps in Bawana and Geeta colony ,and aur team comprising of college students teaches the underprivileged kids living there

They say the foundation of a state is the education of its youth and upon this very foundation is built the glittering superstructure of a nation’s peace and prosperity. We at Jugnu, are doing as much as we can and would continue to fight the behemoth of illiteracy but I hope in times to come there will be more jugnus to light up the darkness that is threatening to engulf the prosperity of our country and give ourselves and our future generation a nation, which the world would envy.