Pune: College Students Volunteer as ‘Educational Ambassadors’ to Help Municipal School Students

Pune, 13th June 2021: The coronavirus pandemic has caused the closure of schools for the last 15 months. The Pune Municipal Corporation’s school in the Market Yard area was also closed at this time and students learning in these schools had no way to get an education as many of them lacked phones or laptops for online education. To keep these children in the main flow of education, the college students in this area became Shikshan Doot aka educational ambassadors.

Children primarily belong to low-income families. Most of them have both parents working and no one is there to take care of their education. Many of them do not have proper internet facilities or smartphones. Also, there was nobody to explain to them or solve their questions. As a result, children are not able to cope with the flow of education.

To help these children, Bal Shikshan Manch, an educational NGO, came up with a unique idea. The Manch asked the college students in this area to initiate a programme and teach those students. With the help of college students, they created small groups of school students and started to teach them at the place where these students were staying.

This initiative includes small activities like basic writing, reading, mathematics and many others. Neeraj Yadav, Vijay Gaikwad, Gopi Patil, Sachin Mule, Pooja Parate, Shivam Ram, Ashvini were the college students who took the responsibility of teaching under this initiative, said Amar Pol, the head of the Bal Shikshan Manch.