Dis­hant, a third child to his par­ents came from a low socio- eco­nom­ic back­ground. His fam­i­ly migrates every year as they work at the con­struc­tion site as dai­ly wage work­ers. Dis­hant joined the local govt school, lat­er in the month of Sep­tem­ber, and he was lag­ging behind in studies.

Peepal was in the process of launch­ing the Devel­op­ment Cen­ter and Dis­hant was the first child to reg­is­ter. He was helped with reme­di­al class­es in Eng­lish, Math and Sci­ence. Grad­u­al­ly, oth­er stu­dents too start­ed attend­ing the class. The first batch of DC com­prised 14 stu­dents. Dis­hant con­tin­ued at the cen­tre till class eight as a result of hav­ing devel­oped an inter­est in stud­ies. He scored an impres­sive 78% in his 10th std and secured the high­est marks in Math. His suc­cess gave a boost to the DC ini­tia­tive. Dis­hant is now a grad­u­ate in com­merce and works at a post office earn­ing a good salary.

Pan­chashila had stopped com­ing to school soon after her father’s death. She had to help her moth­er earn mon­ey by doing house­hold chores at peo­ple’s hous­es. After notic­ing her repeat­ed absence from school, our Change Man­ag­er vis­it­ed her home sev­er­al times and con­vinced her moth­er about the impor­tance of school. Pan­chashila returned to school after much per­sua­sion. Her old friends had moved on but our Change Man­ag­er hand­held her all through as this beau­ti­ful child made efforts to make up for lost time. 

Through our CEDE pro­gramme, she grew in con­fi­dence as she engaged her­self in var­i­ous activ­i­ties, dis­cus­sions, craft, sto­ry telling and role plays among sev­er­al oth­er activ­i­ties. When she was asked to speak a few lines about her fam­i­ly, she showed courage as she spoke about her father and how much she missed him. Pan­chashila now stud­ies in the 6th std and is doing well. Her moth­er is thank­ful that her daugh­ter has this won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to study. Both, indi­vid­u­al­ly, con­tin­ue to work hard towards build­ing a good life for themselves.

Nine year-old Saurabh, lives in a slum near the PMC school at Kalas. He lost his par­ents a few years ago, while his sib­lings live in a small town in UP. In Pune, he lives with his aunt and uncle. He too was enrolled in the CEDE pro­gramme and his biggest take away was his height­ened aware­ness about per­son­al and civic hygiene. He helps his aunt and uncle at home, and behaves respon­si­bly. His most sig­nif­i­cant role mod­el is our change man­ag­er and he wish­es to become one when he grows up. His aunt has noticed a pos­i­tive change and believes he has turned over for the better. 

Peepal has recent­ly embarked on a col­lab­o­ra­tion with “CMCA (Children’s Move­ment for Civic Aware­ness)”, a Ban­ga­lore-based NGO whose mis­sion is to kin­dle and nur­ture active cit­i­zen­ship and incul­cate demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues in chil­dren and youth and through a ‘rip­ple effect’, empow­er and trans­form soci­ety as a whole.

More details are avail­able at — http://www.cmcaindia.org