Pune international institute helps students unable to return to their home countries

After weeks of efforts to evacuate their students, authorities of Mahindra United World College of India in Paud near Pune, are still taking care of five students

After weeks of efforts to evacuate their students, authorities of Mahindra United World College of India in Paud near Pune, are still taking care of five students on campus who have not managed to head back home because their countries are currently conflict zones.

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Even before the government of India implemented a nationwide lockdown owing to rising Covid-19 cases, this residential junior college near Pune was chalking out a plan to stop daily classes and find a way to send their 240 high school students, who come from 80 countries around the world, back home.

“These are students from conflict zones or countries with very severe lockdown, so there’s no way home at present,” said a spokesperson for the institute.

While many teachers from the institute too had to be evacuated from the country, a handful decided to stay back on campus.

“We can’t let them stay alone. So, while they are on campus, we are ensuring they are kept busy with school work and several online courses,” said Aparna Ramchandran, teacher and head of student life at the institute.

Till Saturday, six students were staying on campus for more than a month. “The sixth student is from the Maldives, and the embassy finally arranged a flight to evacuate its citizens. He travelled by road to Delhi, and the flight leaves Delhi on Monday morning,” added Ramchandran.

What started as an evacuation plan on paper in case of an emergency, turned into a two-week-long project for students, parents, as well as the authorities of the institute, as they ensured the students made it back to their respective countries before travel restrictions were put in place.

“It all started in January when some kids from our campus had to cancel their trips back home to China due to the virus. Within a couple of weeks, we realised the virus was not affecting just China but many other countries around the world, and we immediately started to chalk out a plan,” said Ramchandran.

Within a week of the school announcing its evacuation plan, the first year (Class 11) batch was on their way home. “Most of these students had already booked their return tickets for May [end of the school year] so we worked with respective airlines to ensure the dates were changed and at the same time, students’ parents were working on ensuring that their kids would be allowed to enter their country despite the lockdown,” said the spokesperson. She added that within the next week, second-year students were taking flights back home.

While the board of International Baccalaureate (IB) decided to scrap exams for this academic year, the institute has managed to conduct all classes online, despite its students being different parts of the world. “We took a while to find a common and convenient time in the day and finally managed to conduct classes daily from 5.30pm to 8.30pm IST. We also managed to put together a last-minute graduation ceremony for our second-year students before they left the campus,” said Ramchandran, adding that the institute is still looking for ways to send the five remaining students back home.

Most residential schools in Mumbai focused on sending outstation students back home even before the lockdown was first implemented. “We completed all examinations and the last batch of outstation students were sent off on March 21, a day before the Janta Curfew,” said Uday Nare, a teacher at Hansraj Morarji School in Andheri (West). Most of the students came from Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and different parts of Maharashtra.