The Community Outreach Programme is mainly dedicated to the less fortunate sections of the society and to provide a new direction and creativity in the existing traditional education system. Even today, there are many communities, who are deprived from the light of development. The existing schools in such areas are entirely focused on books-and-examinations based education. There is no scope of holistic development for a child/student in such institutions. Such a large part of our society is still deprived of many opportunities and is less privileged. They are still deprived from the basic needs of life, health and education! They are not recognized as the citizens of this country and have no realization about it; at the same time, they are disregarded by the society and the Government. Such communities either stay on the fringes of a town or a city, or live on the foot paths.
Poverty and lack of basic necessities is a common site in these communities. The places where such communities reside are identified as ‘slums’ or ‘Ghettos’. Both men and women in such communities work hard to earn a day’s living. Their children can be found accompanying them to their work place or playing on the street.
In these slums there are some permanent, some temporary, some seasonal and some migrant population as well. In certain slums, one can find daily wage laborers who migrate from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar or other states of India, work for some months and again go back to their natives.
The objective of Community Outreach Programme is to work with such ‘deprived’ children; to bridge the gap between the ‘have-s’ and the ‘have-nots’ and mainstream them into the society. However the most important objective is to develop a feeling of self esteem and self confidence in children. All of this will be made possible through activities, songs, games, cleanliness and hygiene, dialogues, field trips etc. The crux of this is to take steps towards the positive development of a child. It is a step towards negating the book based education and accepting the ‘Gammat sathe gyan’ approach towards learning.
Shishukunj International School, Bhuj and Shishukunj International Foundation are primarily dedicated towards education for children. Varied efforts in education are made by the organization to bring out the holistic approach in education. Education should be child centric, life oriented and experimental. Both the organizations collectively initiated the Community Outreach Programme from 1st August 2018.
The Centres:
Shishukunj Outreach Centre 1: The first centre has been started in Node Vandh near Khari Nadi on the northern outskirts of Bhuj. The community is that of pastoralists who have migrated from Banni area of Kachchh many years ago and have settled here. This place is very much interior from the main road and is nearly 4 k.m. away from the main road. The nearest school from this area is about 7 k. m. away. Due to this distance, no child from this community has been able to go to school. During our initial surveys before starting the project, we came to know of this community and we received a demand from the community itself to help them with the facility of education in their area. Hence, we decided to initiate the first centre in this area. We have been allotted a space by the community to run the centre. The centre started with 5 children and now 21 children are regularly attending the centre.
Shishukunj Outreach Centre 2: The second centre has been functional since October 2018, opposite Seven Sky Mall. The community that lives here is that of migrant laborers, who have shifted to Bhuj from South Gujarat after the 2001 earthquake, and got work as daily wage laborers in various construction sites. A few families have settled near the railway crossing close to Seven Sky Mall. Usually, both men and women go out for work, and children and elderly or sick members of the family stay back to take care of the younger children. There is also a group of pastoralist families, residing opposite the Seven Sky Mall, who are mainly engaged in cattle rearing and as milk vendors. As there is no facility for education in this area for both these groups, it was decided to initiate work with these children and a centre was then set up. The space for the centre has been provided by one of the community members. This centre started with four children and at present 22 children are benefitting from the
Shishukunj Outreach Centre 3: The third Community Outreach Centre will be started near Leuva Patel Hospital on Bhuj-Mundra Road, for the community that lives on the pavements on both sides of the road. This community comprises mainly of daily wage labourers, similar to the Karm Kendra. The people residing here originally belong to villages from Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan and have migrated here for work. The children are involved in rag-picking work and begging on the streets. The biggest challenge in working with this community is that the parents are dependent on children for income, be it by begging or by rag picking or even work as labourers. Thiscentre was started from January 2019. This centre started with three children and at present 22 children is attending the centre. The children are very irregular due their background. Teacher and coordinator are trying hard to retain these children in the centre.
