We cycled to Talegaon to visit https://www.theajitfoundation.in – Through Abhay P, CEEPL has been supporting them for the last two years. Met with Vinaya Nimbalkar, who looks after the Pune center. She and Mahesh, her better half, started this foundation about 20 years ago. They have had more than 4,000 students who have benefitted from their efforts so far. The main objective is to help kids who are forced into begging on the streets to lead a normal childhood. There are about 50 kids at the Barshi center and 30 at the Talegaon facility.
The Barshi center has informal schooling – they tried getting into formal schooling but gave up as they were not able to get grants from the government for teacher salaries. Kids come to Pune after they reach 5th standard. Pune center was added in Covid times – as it was difficult to get donors to visit Barshi.
We were taken through a presentation by Vinaya. They have been donated a nice 100 inch TV for that. Monthly overheads are food – 70 K per month, rent – 40 K per month. They have two cooks who manage the kitchen for 30 kids. The ground floor has an activity hall, kitchen, office and computer lab. The residential area is on the first floor. Kids have their meals outside. Was nice to note that they have borrowed a lot of ideas from Summerhill – students maintain the place, school parliament and elections are there – as are courts for dispute resolution. In the Barshi plot of 2.5 acres, more than 1500 trees have been planted. And yes, students bath under the trees so that the bath water gets recycled by the root system.
I spent time with 10 students. We started by asking them what they liked – most of them answered games like kabaddi, khokho and cricket. The sole girl in the group liked dancing. We then played a ‘question’ game. Groups were to ask questions whose answers they did not know – and which would make the listeners think. My question was 512 + 256 = ? Two groups got this right after 4 minutes of intense discussions. 3 gave up quite fast. There were quite a few 8th graders in the group – and we will need to ensure that mental math skills of students are worked on. They go to a corporation school ni Talegaon – so teacher quality will be suspect there. Some of the questions that got asked:
Why did God put you on this planet?
What came first: the chicken or the egg?
Why do we have plants on the earth?
Is there life outside our planet?
Who was the first person to realise that the earth is round?
What is the distance between the earth and the moon?
We did not discuss any answers – except for the third question, where I put in my tuppence. I pointed out that fact checks don’t make for good questions – last two being cases in point. We ended with finding out what kids wanted to do – we had 3 who wanted to become IPS officers, one wanted to become an IAS officer. What was heartening to note was that 2 were clear that they wanted to get into farming.
We left with some advice for Vinaya.
Get Ajit alumni to visit to motivate current students – at least one visit should happen every week. Currently, only 2-3 visits happen in one year.
Get visitors to donate ‘time’ – money usually follows.