Providing quality edu to tribal kids

Bandra Couple Gives Up City Life To Start School In Dahanu Village

Anahita Mukherji I TNN

Sogwe Village (Dahanu): Call it a case of reverse migration. While millions trade their homes in the village for life in a metro, two Mumbaikars decided to do the unthinkable. Bandra girl Michelle Chawla and her husband, Hemant Babu turned their backs on the big city lights and headed for a tribal village in Dahanu called Sogwe, where they have lived for the last eight years.

After nearly a decade of working at community radio stations and documenting the oral history of the Warli tribals in Dahanu, the duo set up a pre-primary school for tribal kids in June this year.

Their aim? To provide quality education. The school uses a whole range of progressive methods of teaching that could give city schools a run for their money. While introducing English to these children, the medium of instruction at the school is Warli, a dialect of Marathi spoken by the tribals in the village.

The teachers at the school are sourced from the local community itself. Two teachers, Anusaya Sunar and Anil Gorkhana, are Warli tribals while another, Tina Surti is from a community of bamboo weavers in Dahanu. They were put through a course in early childhood education by Active Learning Centre, an organization that works in the education sphere.

“There’s a huge disconnect between students and teachers at government-run balwadis and zilla parishad schools, where the teachers are not from the local area and speak in Marathi. The kids don’t relate to the pure, Brahminical form of the language, as their dialect varies from it. We want to provide them with an education that is culturally relevant and at the same time, exposes them to the outside world,’’ says Chawla. Gadgets like laptops that may otherwise be alien to the village, have now entered the lives of these children.

For Chawla and her husband, starting a school isn’t a form of charity. Instead, they’re looking at a social entrepreneurship model, where parents pay Rs 200 a month as fee. Those who can’t afford it can apply for a scholarship.

The school attracts children from neighbouring villages such as Jamshet as well. So just why have a bunch of farmers, brickkiln workers and truck drivers—whose average family income works out to Rs 4,000 a month—chosen to cough up Rs 200 to send their kids to a private school when they have free government schools?

“The education here is very good. Our children get to learn English,’’ said Ganpat Dhinde, a construction worker from Jamshet. “In the zilla parishad school, the teachers only write reports, teach our kids a couple of songs and send them home. They don’t learn anything there,’’ adds Sunil Dhodi, a farmer from Jamshet.

The village sarpanch at Sogwe, Lahani Tandel, has supported the school and even went house to house telling the villagers that if they were willing to spend money buying cellphones, they could just as well set aside Rs 200 a month on education.

While the school currently caters to pre-school kids in the age group of three to five, Chawla and Babu plan to start a primary school as well. And unlike most folks, they even plan to enroll their own daughter Ira in the same school along with the tribal kids, once she’s of the right age to join.

Michelle Chawla with tribal kids at her school at Sogwe, a village in Dahanu