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Rajesh Kumar Sharma is not an ordinary teacher, nor does he work at a regular school. While employed at a construction site to make ends meet, he spotted his fellow laborers’ kids playing in a nearby field when they should have been learning. Concerned, he offered them candy and clothes, but he soon came up with a more enduring way to help them. Since 2006, Sharma has been looking out for underserved children of New Delhi at his “Free School of Under the Bridge.”
Sharma’s personal history inspired the project. While he aspired to be an engineer, he had to drop out of college due to a lack of financial resources. Now, Sharma hopes to help kids from the slums around the Yamuna River—whose parents are often farmers, informal workers, and irregular migrants—avoid the same fate. What started as simple tutoring of two children has grown into an open-air school attended by nearly 300 kids.
Located under two pillars of an aerial bridge, the free school welcomes kids from the first year of primary to the third year of secondary school. Blackboards have been painted on a wall, and most students sit on carpets or on the dirt floor. Sharma and the other three volunteer teachers who have joined the effort don’t take attendance, and there are no structured groups, as kids are free to come and join a lesson whenever they need to.
Out of Sharma’s encouragement, most of the students are enrolled in government-run schools, where they get free textbooks and meals. Later, Sharma offers them help with subjects they struggle with, such as mathematics, English, Hindi, science, history, and geography. “We use the national textbooks and do everything we can with the few resources we have, to help them progress,” the teacher told UNESCO.
The teacher also goes out of his way to help those who can’t join a regular school. On top of providing them with an education, he helps the children of undocumented migrants get the needed paperwork to enroll them in school, or he pleads with parents, who make their children work for them, to let them study.
While praised for his efforts, Sharma is afraid of setting up a non-governmental organization (NGO) out of fear of being dismantled. “It’s a way to avoid paperwork, but also because I’m afraid that with a formal structure, the metro authorities will be afraid that we’ve settled in, and will kick us off their property,” he said. That’s why, to avoid misunderstandings, he doesn’t take donations in cash, but rather in the form of things that can benefit the students, such as clothing, food, books, water bottles, and chairs.
“In India, it is said that the most beautiful lotuses are born in the marshes,” the teacher said, signaling how his students can thrive despite their circumstances—and much to his delight, they have. One of his earliest students has just entered university and shares Sharma’s aspiration of one day becoming an engineer. “I didn’t want this generation to lose out just because they are poor,” he told Al Jazeera. ”Through these children, I get to live my dream.”
Rajesh Kumar Sharma created the “Free School of Under the Bridge” to help underserved children in New Delhi.
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What started as simple tutoring of two children has grown into an open-air school attended by nearly 300 kids.
Ver esta publicación en Instagram
“I didn’t want this generation to lose out just because they are poor.” he told Al Jazeera. “Through these children I get to live my dream.”
Ver esta publicación en Instagram
Sources: The school under a bridge in New Delhi; A day in Delhi’s under-the-bridge school for the poor
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