Help 650 students of Vimukti Girls School, Jaipur with books and stationery

Slums of Jaipur suffer from abysmally low living conditions, health and sanitation, compounded by social ills such as drug abuse and crimes against women. Discrimination against young girls is embedded in the culture and is reinforced by poverty. Main barrier is the attitude of poverty-stricken parents who keep them at home watching over siblings or involve them in low skill tasks for meagre wages.

When we started the school in 2004, initially, no fee was charged and it was thought to be a good reason to bring girls to school as paying fee for a girl child was, and still is considered a huge financial burden which either parents are not willing to bear, or do not have the capacity to bear. But soon we realised that there are other elements which cost money, such as books and uniform. There was a reluctance on the part of parents as the movement to and fro from school involved cost; not just the tangible i.e, the cost of transport, but also the intangible(if they were to drop the children themselves, they would lose their daily wage and sending girls on their own was a big risk). Plus in some cases, there was a loss of wage to be earned by the girls.

Our approach has been to remove the hindrances which parents face , economically and otherwise, in sending their girls to school. Thus, we provide free education (zero tuition fee), free uniforms, free books and stationery, free meals and subsidized transport to all the students. Since we run afternoon shifts in the premises of another school, girls get time in the morning hours to finish household chores or to help their mothers in tailoring, or any other work.

As health of girls is of least importance in the community, they do not get required nourishment-we give them milk and fruits in school. And this, for some girls, is the only meal they have in the entire day.

Initially, VGS was looked upon merely as a place where girls got free meals. But as girls learnt to read and write, helped their parents with mathematical calculations. reading newspaper/letters, parents started to realize the importance of girl education. Parents, especially fathers’ interest and involvement in the schooling of their girls has increased. Parent teachers’ meetings now have 85-90% attendance. Barring one or two cases, parents do not hurry to marry off their girls anymore. Removing financial burden of parents in sending their daughters did help us attract them to school but our aim was not just to get numbers, we started focussing on quality. This becomes essential as the students have no learning support at their homes.

The school has introduced many quality elements including conducting subject based and general pedagogy trainings for teachers, setting up of subject based labs and a book club, initiation of digital learning solutions, training in dance and organisation of Annual Day and Sports Day, conduction of counselling sessions and storytelling sessions.

The fact that we lose our students to other schools which admit them in higher grades because of their academic quality is worrisome but at the same time speaks of our qualitative input with the girls.