Bringing them to school

Meenu now works for an NGO, Tong-Lan, which sponsors her college education and encourages her to teach children in Charan Khad shanties, reports Archana Phull.

Twenty-year-old Meenu has just returned home from college and she is already in a rush to head back to the classroom — this time as teacher.

HT Image

Meenu, a first-year student of humanities at the government college, is perhaps the first from the Charan Khad shanties to make it to college. Now, she is on a mission to ensure that others from her locality get to go to school.

It was not easy for Meenu to convince her parents that she wanted to go to school. "I always wanted to do well. But my family said girls had to stay back and do chores at home. My parents were poor labourers from Hanumangarh in Rajasthan. Somehow, I managed to persuade them to put me in school. I wish all children here could be in school," she said.

Meenu now works for an NGO, Tong-Lan, which sponsors her college education and encourages her to teach children in Charan Khad. She had to rent a room outside the slums because the shanties had no power supply. She teaches girls in slums for two hours every week and helps children complete their homework. So, ‘Meenu Ma’am’ teaches the children everything from etiquette to English and Hindi. She also guides women on social issues.

Green army

Patna: Wealth from the wild — that is what a team of Patna University researchers is currently busy trying to reap. Members of the team are moving around in the rural areas of the state armed with their laptops, cameras and projectors motivating economically weak rural women to collect wild plants or cultivate them in their kitchen gardens or courtyards.

VK Tripathi