A Delhi-based community school HOPE helps underprivileged children not having access to online education due to the COVID-19 pandemic to learn through mobile classrooms and provide free education to children along with free mid-day meals.
A Delhi-based HOPE community school is helping underprivileged children who do not have access to online education due to the COVID-19 pandemic to learn in mobile classrooms and provide free education for children as well as free meals at noon.
“We launched this concept seven years ago. We aim to reach children in underserved communities, ”said Marlo Philip, founder of the NGO Tejas Asia.
Phillip added, “Through the ‘hope buses’ we are aiming to get to places especially in an underserved community because we have discovered that they do not have access to schools. We want to bring them. schools to students. This has been our dream. We have seen so many lives touched and impacted by it. We also give them a midday meal which is cooked in our Hope Kitchen in Tughlaqabad “.
Phillip pioneered the idea of putting education behind the wheel seven years ago. The community school currently has four buses that travel to eight locations in the capital to teach students. The starting point of the buses is Saket in Delhi. Then the buses go to different places in Delhi. He also started a project in Gurugram.
The children are made to study for two hours, then to eat. Children learn basic educational skills like language and basic math, said Ebina, who operates the bus.
“After seeing that there is some potential in a child, we enroll him in a public school,” Ebina added.
One of the mobile bus students said, “I used to go to a nearby government school. As the schools are closed, I come here to study ”.
One of the student’s fathers, who is a ragpicker, said: “I send my child to study on the bus so that he can do a little better in his life. Our lives can also be better because of it. We are just trying to push our children “
Babli, another rag picker, who sends her child on the bus to study, said: “We are not educated to teach our children at home. Now the bus services have resumed, so we have started sending our kids to mobile again. bus”.
Ebina, the manager of the bus explained the process, saying: “Once we find a needy place where there are uneducated children, we do a survey and we find out how many children are not in school and what are the reasons behind If we find that there is a need, then we are launching a bus project in this locality “.
On the operation of the school in the lockdown initiated due to COVID-19, the founder said: “The pandemic has been very difficult. All the children were asking when the school bus was coming because it is their school. had to wait for the government to allow it.
“In the last few days alone we started going to a few places and the kids were happy to jump on the bus. The number of children has increased after COVID. I think Hope buses bring hope to their lives, ”added the founder.
“On the bus we provide, chalkboards, coloring pens and whatever else we can in the little space,” Marlo added.
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