India's Bridge School

A REMARKABLE SCHOOL UNDER A BRIDGE IN NEW DELHI

In New Delhi, under a bridge of the Metro, a small daily Miracle is Happening.

Around 70 children from neighboring slums attend this outdoor school which was erected there by a silent Hero. The 40-year old Rajesh Kumar Sharma also father of three children.

As pointed out and that was happening with many children in the surrounding areas, "they did not go to school because their families can not afford the cost. Whenever I passed by the area, just saw kids from loitering here and there, wondering without any purpose, waisting their time" Rajesh said, explaining how the whole thing started. "So, I thought to create a free school with no exceptions on their cast, area and background.

And because it was not even affordable to build - or even to rent a small space to teach, he painted two walls black to use them as a chalkboard and began to teach under a bridge.

At the same time, he tried to convince the workers, farmers and peasants of the area, to allow their children to attend classes, instead of working to supplement the family income.

Indeed. Soon, they began to arrive in the "open school" children who would otherwise be working from here and from there, without having the slightest chance to escape the poverty birthright.
At school lessons they start from the basics. The aim is to prepare children to continue at a public school. When he started the project last year, it had 140 students.

Now, at least half of them, as he says himself, he managed to put them in mainstream schools. To be able to keep the "school in operation", Sharma is leaving for about two hours of his work (a shop in a shopping mall at Shakarpur) to go teach while his brother stays at the shop.

"Our Teacher tells us how to deal with poverty, You must open your mind and this can be done only through education" told to a local newspaper a 15 year old student of Sharma.

© Les Bons Viveurs 2013