IAS Diaries Part 26 - Adopt A School

Education has always been my top priority. Fortunately during our stint at the Central Secretariat, I was attached to MHRD. It was indeed a great learning experience to observe the nuances of the education policy being deliberated. We were fortunate to visit Rajasthan and witness firsthand how they were improving their education sector so swiftly, the details of which you can read HERE. We also, as a batch, tried to cover as many Kendriya Vidyalayas as were possible for counselling sessions, more details HERE. And where ever I have been posted, I always went around covering as many schools and colleges as I could, for career counselling sessions.  When I joined as SDO(Civil) Dadenggre, the first thing I wanted to see, were the government schools. So every morning we would start early before office hours to inspect few schools. And after a month, the picture was pretty clear. But unfortunately very dismal.

The picture collage above is of Songadingre LP School in Dadenggre and the story of almost all the schools runs similar to this one. A typical LP school here would have 2-3 rooms at most, 2-3 teachers and around 30-40 children. Students of all classes are packed into one single room given the paucity of space and teachers. The ambiance is non-existent. The aesthetics are a foreign phenomenon. But the formality of education crawls forward. The word 'forward' really being debatable here. By the time I finished visiting most of the schools in the subdivision, we had completed a pilot project of making a Model Anganwadi center. You can read about it HERE. After few weeks we observed that the attendance had significantly improved, the kids were staying in the center for more time and the Anganwadi worker got highly motivated. We thought we should do the same for schools and from there came the idea of "Adopt A School". 

Under the able guidance of our Deputy Commissioner Shri Ram Singh, IAS, we were already in the process of conceptualizing a campaign to improve our education domain. We had named it as Project STAR (School Transformation by Augmenting Resources). As the name suggests, we had in mind a convergence platform wherein we pool in several resources already existing to enhance various strands of education vertical. One of the objectives under Project STAR is to improve the infrastructure of the government schools. Apart from the dovetailing of several other schemes to achieve this, we thought of crowd funding and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)  also. 

It was during this time that I came across the news that our Honorable Chief Minister Shri Conrad K Sangma donated his salary to renovate a school in Nongstoin. It was such an inspirational gesture with an appeal to others to follow suit. I decided that I would take up one school too by donating my two-month's salary. But the school I had in mind, needed severe repairs that would need additional funds. Also, there was an Anganwadi adjacent to it which was also in a terrible shape. So I initiated an online crowd funding campaign for school renovation at the time of Diwali. A lot many people from Meghalaya and across the country contributed in this campaign and made it successful. As soon as we had the funds, we initiated the renovation process. We engaged local artists to beautify the renovated rooms and wall. Here are few pictures for you to see....

The children seemed overwhelmed with joy to see their transformed school. But there are thousands of more such schools to be transformed and there are lakhs of such children waiting for it to happen. It's a gigantic task and to achieve it faster, we need support from all possible directions. Let's all come together and transform these institutions that are the key of empowering the future generations of Meghalaya. Let us, adopt a school!

P.S. To read other posts from IAS Diaries, CLICK HERE!

P.S.2. To read telegraph coverage of this CLICK HERE!

P.S. 3. Article in The Better India, CLICK HERE!

P.S.4. Article in The Logical Indian, CLICK HERE!