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Signal Shala is a programme of Samarth Bharat. The main aim to start the initiative was because the children were stuck in the vicious cycle of begging from one generation to the next. The team found that in order to break this chain it was essential to educate the children.
The children were provided free education. In order to solve this problem the team of Samarth Bharat took matters into their own hands and came up with a school underneath a flyover, near the signal. Most of the children who resorted to begging belonged to the tribes of Maharashtra and could not speak in Hindi. Although language was a challenge, the team first prepared the syllabus in their language (Paradhi) and started teaching them in Hindi once they understood what they were being taught. It was understood that for them, a mainstream school would not make sense. Bathing, for them, was a luxury. There were three main hurdles initially: coordination with the parents, access to toilets and language barriers. Since the children could not fit into the mainstream society, the school provided them with all the facilities right from providing a place to take a bath to providing them with breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The focus was also to provide the kids with food that would nourish them thereby eradicating malnutrition. The teachers started teaching them from scratch, learning their mother tongue and then making them learn to read and write in Marathi. Belonging from a poor background, the children did not have a birth certificate. Signal Shala took this matter in their own hands and solved the issue as well. So the process of learning, unlearning and relearning was constant.
Challenges of begging, malnutrition, superstitions among parents and children, child marriages and health issues were tackled by the team of teachers and volunteers through counseling facilities. Further, another major challenge was to enroll the students in the classes according to their age as RTI mentions that a student from a specific age has to attend a specific class. This meant teaching the students all the necessary subject matter. The classes were being held in airtight containers. Further, Signal Shala made sure that the teaching was done by regular teachers and not volunteers as they wanted the education attained by the students to be training bound and result oriented.
The children were provided free education. In order to solve this problem the team of Samarth Bharat took matters into their own hands and came up with a school underneath a flyover, near the signal. Most of the children who resorted to begging belonged to the tribes of Maharashtra and could not speak in Hindi. Although language was a challenge, the team first prepared the syllabus in their language (Paradhi) and started teaching them in Hindi once they understood what they were being taught. It was understood that for them, a mainstream school would not make sense. Bathing, for them, was a luxury. There were three main hurdles initially: coordination with the parents, access to toilets and language barriers. Since the children could not fit into the mainstream society, the school provided them with all the facilities right from providing a place to take a bath to providing them with breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The focus was also to provide the kids with food that would nourish them thereby eradicating malnutrition. The teachers started teaching them from scratch, learning their mother tongue and then making them learn to read and write in Marathi. Belonging from a poor background, the children did not have a birth certificate. Signal Shala took this matter in their own hands and solved the issue as well. So the process of learning, unlearning and relearning was constant.
Challenges of begging, malnutrition, superstitions among parents and children, child marriages and health issues were tackled by the team of teachers and volunteers through counseling facilities. Further, another major challenge was to enroll the students in the classes according to their age as RTI mentions that a student from a specific age has to attend a specific class. This meant teaching the students all the necessary subject matter. The classes were being held in airtight containers. Further, Signal Shala made sure that the teaching was done by regular teachers and not volunteers as they wanted the education attained by the students to be training bound and result oriented.
