...And they're off

After settling in for a couple of days in Delhi, Pushkar and I went to Mumbai for a whirlwind visit. We were in and out in two days. Mumbai seemed to be a logical place for me to start my journey, since it was here that the first Pratham initiatives were originally launched in 1994. We managed to see and do a lot in just two days, but one of the most compelling field visits we made was to the Mohammed Rafi Nagar school, situated on the edge of the Rafi Nagar Dumping Ground. This sprawling landfill site is the main destination for rubbish from all over the city of Mumbai and it is, accordingly, huge. Many of the children living near the dumping ground, venture into it for work. They are rag pickers, trawling through the mountains of trash for scraps of metal, plastic, cloth; rather worryingly some collect medical refuse (which shouldn’t even be there in the first place, but…)

Unsurprisingly, this is one of the toughest areas of Mumbai. The school (the only one in the area) is in poor condition - large puddles yawned across the classroom floors and the walls, once beautifully painted with jungle and farm scenes, were faded and crumbling. Flies swarmed.


[Flies in a school window]

On account of the rain many teachers had not come in that day. Unsupervised pupils were running through the corridor and in and out of the classrooms. In the middle of this, a young Pratham CCP (Community Contact Person) was teaching the Urdu alphabet to a small group of children.


[Teaching Urdu with a magnetic board]

The children were rapt, loudly repeating after the volunteer as she held brightly colored alphabet magnets up against a white board. She was laughing and smiling, encouraging the children to ask questions and match up the magnets with the characters on their reading cards.


Later when we were chatting with her, I was fascinated to hear about the enormous impact Pratham had on her life. It was hard to imagine that the fiery and energetic girl before us had once been too shy to venture into the local market alone. She had passed most of her life in the house and she had never thought about working before Pratham offered her the opportunity. Today, she travels alone on the bus to attend meetings, she socializes independently of her family, and co-ordinates with parents in her local area to make sure attendance rates at school improve. She has decided to work for a few years before getting married, and has convinced her younger sister to study beyond 12th Standard. I started to think about the thousands upon thousands of volunteers all over the country that have been mobilized by Pratham. I wondered: how many other inspirational stories remain untold elsewhere?


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