When five-year-old Aishwarya was reciting English nursery rhymes in front of an assembled audience comprising school students, teachers, principal and corporates, it was a proud moment for her parents. Aishwarya?s parents can?t speak or understand English.
Three hours from Mumbai, in Panvel district, the village of Wazapur is a far cry from the glitz and the rush of the metropolitan city. Dusty roads, thin clusters of thatched houses and children running amuck in the ponds are the sights that greet the eye. It is difficult to get through the local populace in Hindi. Marathi is the regional lingo.
The lone school in the village, Waza Primary and Secondary School, had a clutch of students waiting to see their new school laboratory to be officially opened. Tata Consultancy Services, as part of its social responsibility, has built a laboratory at the Waza Secondary School. The school has three small buildings. Earlier, there were just a few classrooms in the main building with a tin shed. When the classrooms got hot during the scorching summers, students were taught under the trees, says CK Patil, the geography and Marathi teacher who has been teaching here for eight years.
The old school building with its leaking roof has been rebuilt and now sports solar panels. Voltas has presented the school with a water cooler and two sewing machines. Last year, TCS build a computer laboratory for the school.
Mala Ramdorai, founder, TCS Maitree, the in-house social organisation to a number of social programmes, was hopeful that more students would join the school. Every week TCS volunteers visit the school to help teachers and students with new learning techniques and methods. ?We began with the Waza Primary School, where we encouraged parents to send their children to school,? relates Gaurav Arora, a TCS volunteer. ?We have introduced adult literacy programmes also for the villagers.? Women are encouraged to learn handicrafts, for which training is provided by Women?s India Trust (WIT). ?Villagers are taught the value of money,? says Nina Screwvala, head, Maitree. ?Women earn money through art and supplement the family income. The adult literacy programmes has benefited families against social menaces like alcoholism.?
Principal of the Waza Secondary School, Ms Katgi, was hopeful that with new classroom equipment, computers and science laboratory, more children from adjacent villages would join the school.
TCS CEO and MD, S Ramdorai exhorted the children: ?You should participate in the globalisation programme and solving the problems of the community and country.? He hoped an APJ Abdul Kalam would emerge from their midst. Who knows. It just might.