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An F- type
flat in the HEC area of Ranchi, Jharkhand. Twenty two children of barbers,
cobblers, maid-servants, paper-vendors inhabiting the four
bedrooms of the flat, sleeping on nothing other than mere
bed sheets without pillows. The long drawing room converted
into a training hall where dozens of black-boards are
hanging on which phonetic script, English words and sentence
structures are seen. Children quietly sitting and gazing the
blackboards.
This is the scene at the one month TOTAL DEVELOPMENT CAMP
for twenty-two underprivileged children organized by Bharat
Shodh in collaboration with the HEC’s education department.
If the achievements of these underprivileged children in
about a month’s time are any measure, it becomes clear that
a revolution is in the offing. Most of the children didn’t
know even 100 words of English properly before joining this
camp. All of a sudden after thirty days most of them have
acquired a vocabulary of nearly thirteen hundred words with
their spellings, pronunciation and meanings. They can spell
and pronounce correctly the tongue-twisting words like
‘entrepreneurship’, ‘transparency’, ‘accountability’! Most
of them also have mastered immaculately all the
tense-structures and their transformation into different
types of sentences. An incredible feat by any standards,
since no professional English teaching institute is known to
have been able to impart so much knowledge of English to
this category of people in such a short time. But lo and
behold! This is not the main achievement of the camp
according to P.K. Siddharth, who is the architect of the
program and whose new instructional regime called “ Jivan
Sannidhi” (‘in-the-proximity-of-life’) is being
implemented at such learning camps. He says that a
thousand-plus vocabulary and fifty basic sentence structures
are only fringe benefits of this camp. The essential
benefit is that children have acquired the concepts and
competencies, emotions and inspiration that will hereafter
propel them to great heights in life. Children have learnt
‘Jivan mein bada kaise bante hain’ (how to
become great or big in life). The camp has taught them
certain things that schools and colleges fail to teach in
nearly two decades of formal education. These concepts and
competencies include Character Literacy, Computer Literacy,
Business Literacy, Study Skills, Emotional Literacy, Self
Learning Competencies, Value Literacy, Good Manners,
Interview Techniques, Time Management, Secrets of High
Achievement, Anger Management, Conversational English, Group
Discussion, Life Skills, Introspection and Self analysis,
Spirituality Quotient, Role Plays, Brain Storming,
Communications Skills, Reasons and Remedies of Poverty,
Cultural Awareness etc.
Bharat Shodh is not satisfied with developing these
twenty-two children. It dreams of imparting similar
education to twenty-two hundred, then twenty-two thousands,
and possibly twenty-two lakhs underprivileged but
academically brilliant children, by holding large TOTAL
DEVELOPMENT CAMPS in which hundreds and thousands of
children can acquire the necessary direction and motivation
in life. All the children trained by Mr. Siddharth and is
team take a vow to train and motivate another 10 children.
And all this is for free except for the food grains that
children may bring for their subsistence at the camps Bharat
Shodh may hold in future. Bharat Shodh plans to hold similar
camps for youth of 16 to 21 years of age in view of the
growing demand from this section of people. |
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