It’s a warm sunny day in Mewat, Haryana when I spot 13-year-old Udaan graduate Najma fidgeting around in a corner of the courtyard of the Udaan school. She’s biting her nails so I ask what’s making her so anxious. She nearly bursts out with frustration and tells me she can wait no longer to receive her eighth grade results! She tells me how she ... Read More
Rubina is the first in her village to send her daughter to school. “I was always interested in studying and definitely wanted to give my daughter an opportunity to study. People were against my decision, saying she will get spoilt and that nobody will guide her, but I took the plunge and later found that they do more than just guide!” she says with a ... Read More
Murshida is the first girl from the village Mahaun in Mewat district of Haryana, to study beyond primary school. A 2013 Udaan graduate, she studied until third grade in the village school and then dropped out. It was only when Join My Village field staff went to her village, met her hesitant parents and eventually convinced them to enrol her at Udaan, that Murshi... Read More
It was in the KGBV Gilaula of Shrawasti district in Uttar Pradesh that I met Seema Srivastav – a young, smart, friendly and much loved former warden of the school. Seema passionately described her experience as a KGBV warden for the past 5 years. She has been so close with the students that she is often visited by even the parents of the alumnae. Having bee... Read More
The KGBV school in the Bahraich district of Uttar Pradesh is a warm and welcoming building whose classroom and library walls are covered with many beautifully handmade posters. The students, wearing neat uniforms, stood in front of a school reciting poetry and performing a short theatre p... Read More
Daraksha Noori has many skills and interests: she loves to study and she also enjoys crafts and sewing. Daraksha, who is 16 and a 10th grader in the Bahraich district of Uttar Pradesh, is also a big sports enthusiast, which is somewhat unusual for girls in rural India, as sports are often presumed to be a boys’ pastime. However Daraksha&rsqu... Read More
Shabnam met me in front of her small brick house with a big smile and tight hug – a stranger who quickly became a friend just by welcoming a dusty traveller. I had travelled for more than 10 hours to meet this young woman from a remote village in India who recently travelled around the world to New York City for the Read More
India’s scheduled tribes, or Adivasis, are a historically excluded community, marginalized by their geographic isolation and their social, religious, linguistic, and cultural distinctiveness. Their powerlessness as a community is compounded by systematic barriers that prevent them from accessing their rights to opportunities and resources. Not surprisin... Read More
With the proliferation of internet on mobile devises, an unprecedented number of people find themselves connected online. In India, access to information and the internet has ballooned lately, largely influenced by some of the cheapest calling and data rates in the world. India has more than 960 million cell phone users, many of whom use smart phones. Increasingl... Read More
In April 2014, I visited the Bagda primary school of Mundra block in the Kutch district of Gujarat. After reaching the school, I went to the classes, along with the Head teacher and Deepak, who is the School Improvement Coordinator there. The School Improvement Coordinator (SIC) is a part of the K- Leap Project of CARE India, which initiated the English Language ... Read More
Classrooms nowadays are like combat zones in an ancient Roman Amphitheatre, wherein armed gladiators fight for their survival. In the modern era, children armed with books and tuitions are replaying this, as they combat for higher ranks. Learning is replaced by reproduction, fun repealed with anxiety and play time stripped away by special classes. In this scenari... Read More
March 20th marks International Day of Happiness There is no way to escape Pharrell Williams and his “Happy” song lately. And why should we? March 20th has been declared International Day of Happiness by the United Nations in 2012. Sounds crazy? Think again. In UN speech, this day serves to“recogn... Read More
