Bengaluru: Thanks to an initiative by two techies the teaching standards of seven government schools located in Whitefield area have improved substantially. The two techies, Naveen Kumar Dahiya (29) and M.P. Harshavardhana (43), embarked on this journey about two months ago and are providing volunteers and teaching aids to these schools. They claim the outcome was ‘quite satisfying’.
Naveen told Deccan Chronicle, “It all started when we were helping children get enrolled in private schools under RTE. During a conversation with Dr Niranjanaradhya Vice-Principal, National Law School of India University, he pointed it out that it was important to improve the standards of government school as majority of the downtrodden children go to these schools and there were only limited seats in private schools under RTE. Then we conducted a survey, started visiting the government schools located in Whitefield area and began our search for volunteers to teach.”
The volunteers required were primarily for English and Computers Science subjects. Naveen said, “There are many government schools that have computers donated by companies under CSR, but they don’t have qualified people to teach the children. Sadly, in our country it is not the number of classes, but the number of students that is taken into consideration while appointing them. So in many schools there are hardly two teachers.”
Naveen and Harshavardhana have also been working with two private schools namely S.N. Vidya Mandir and Cottolengo School for Mentally Challenged Children. S.N. Vidya Mandir is an English medium school maintained by a trust and the trust members got in touch with the duo to assist them. Many private schools in the area send out the academically weak children after 7th standard, in order to maintain good results at public exams, and most of them land at this school. “This was a revelation to us. So, now we have got volunteers to take special classes for them,” Naveen said.
They claimed that finding volunteers was not a difficult task. Harshavardhana said, “Apart from WhatsApp and other social media, we also visit areas surrounding a particular school and spread the word. We visit apartments and get in touch with the local association. In fact, we got four volunteers from an apartment nearby to teach at S.N. Vidya Mandir. The volunteers only suggested we have a separate class for weak students so that they can focus on them.”
Currently they are providing volunteers and teaching aids at government schools located in Kundalahalli Colony, Vijayanagara, Kundalahalli Village, Nallurahalli, Hoodi and Urdu Primary School, Vijanagara. Harshavardhana added, “Most volunteers are either housewives who are qualified or working professional devote their time during weekends. At present there are 16 volunteers and are looking for more.”
