Dropping my son to the nursery, my thoughts led to my own school days. Oh how beautiful they were! Getting the first bike on a birthday, having a best friend, raising a hand (sometimes both hands!) when you knew the answer to a question in class, having a favorite teacher, sharing lunch boxes, giggling on the backbenches and when the exams came, waking up all night just because you get to taste coffee from your mom who is full of sympathy for you. (Otherwise it was always the Bournvita with milkJ). No matter what happened on any day, they were just filled with fun and adventure.
When the school started every year, there was the joy in buying new school uniforms, the curiosity of who the new teachers would be and the mesmerizing smell of new shoes, notebooks and text books.
When the school term would end, there was fun there too in the many things to do in holidays like watching lots of movies, go visit relatives ,reading story books or just go on picnics with friends. (These days its playing Xbox or learning computer languagesJ , but fun changes with time. Doesn’t it?)
You may have a similar story as mine or different but you surely must have enjoyed the way it was. Even if you had not enjoyed it a lot, Is it not a crucial part of where you are today?
I wondered how many children do not have the beautiful experiences of a school life in India and found that in 2011, the literacy rate is 74.4%. It does seems to be improving each year, but it’s still a long way to go if you want to stop so many other problems associated with it like exploitation, unemployment, overpopulation, poverty and other limits imposed on even a very talented person, only because of not having a basic primary education.
This month I would like to donate to an Indian charity Sanskriti Sanvardhan Mandal which works very hard in the rural education sector. In just 3000 INR, a child would get education, school uniforms, books, medical checkup, nutritional supplements and sports equipments for a whole year.
Below is the link to the online donation option
Below is the link to the charity website
