Class 3 in Khelaghar, Raghunatpur (South 24 Pgs.), 26 Feb. 07
Q: How did you start YMWS?
Shourabh Mukherjee: St Lawrence Evening School is just 40 years old: We started on 2nd September, in 1968! There was social unrest in West Bengal, and Father Subir Biswas had created a platform of organisations in 1970-71 for working in the long run with the refugees. We focused on primary and pre-primary education.Q: Where did you start?
Shourabh Mukherjee: We started in my house, with 2-3 friends. We had 29 pupils. We then went to St Lawrence School, where the Principal, Father Bruylants, was very responsive. He immediately gave us 2 class-rooms, then 4, then 8, and ultimately one full building, for free. Today, 482 children join the classes from 4 P.M. with 85% attendance. They come from all the neighbouring slums. St Lawrence School give us class rooms, free electricity, play ground, and to be in such a school also give a sense of pride.
Q: Are you a former pupil of St Lawrence?
Shourabh Mukherjee: No, this school was simply in our neighbourhood. Then, evening schools became a gradual movement.
Q:Like the Rainbow School in Loreto Sealdah?
Shourabh Mukherjee: And Don Bosco, Queen of the Mission, Teetly in St Xavier (where Father Bruylants went), and many others. Now, YMWS alone is running 8 schools with 3850 pupils. Among these schools, "Children's Foundation" in Taratalla and "Young Horizons" in Barakhola (E.M. Bypass), with 900 pupils each, can be termed "Regular Schools", under ICSE board. The other 6 schools are "Community Schools", or "Khela Ghar" (named after Tagore) with 2000 pupils. These include St Lawrence Evening School, the schools at Raghunatpur and Parvatipur on the road between Diamond Harbour and Kakdwip, the Kinder Garten on Theater Road, the primary school at Karaya Road, and since April 2007, Young Horizons Evening school. This one, the latest, already has 2 classes and 75 pupils. We campaigned by going straight to the people in the neighbourhood, door to door. We add one class every year, as the pupils get older, until class 6 when they join Young Horizons or an other regular school. We plan to open one new school per year in this manner. Children's Foundation is 25 years old, and Young Horizons started in 2002, on a land given by the Government, on a recommendation of Mother Teresa.
Q: I have seen the school at Ratghunatpur 2 years ago, on the occasion of the 5-day Waldorf Education Training by Aban and Dilnawaz Bana, that you organised for the teachers. I was kindly invited, and visiting the school next to the training centre, left on me a rare and durable feeling of plenitude and wholesomeness. This was so different from so many initiatives in direction of the poor, where things or processes often look shabby, improvised, or simply missing their target, as if things for the poor should "look poor", or a little inappropriate, or a little misplaced, for some obscure reason.
Shourabh Mukherjee: I hate this…
Q: But in your school, there was no broken pipes, no forgotten utensils in dusty corners, the painting was fresh, the garden was lush and tidy, and even the chappals of the pupils were neatly arranged on the steps of the veranda. The classrooms were full of beautiful and new drawings and paintings made by the pupils and their teachers, and the children were happy and active, but not excited, obedient but not timid, and I thought, this could be a good school for my daughter. I actually made up my mind then: If you could achieve that much in Raghunatpur, I became confident that Young Horizons, which is in my neighbourhood in Kolkata, must be an equally good school. What I perceived was this: Here is a clear and sincere interest for the children, unpolluted by any other consideration. This is what parents want, isn't it? Yet nothing expensive was there: no glazed windows, plain corrugated sheets on the roof, no false ceiling, extremely simple or no furniture, and nothing conspicuous purchased from outside, except the paper, pencils and colours. Or, from an other point of view: Nothing was there to intimidate parents or children, it was actually not very different from their homes, where they also remove their shoes before entering, and which are almost always clean and tidy, probably because when your life depends on very few possessions, chaos is an unaffordable luxury.
Shourabh Mukherjee: I believe in "Cleanliness is next to Godliness". It lifts the spirit, and gradually this spirit is invoked by you. You must give the children the best opportunities, and invest in infrastructure if you believe in the future. I also like what Narayan Murthy, of Infosys, says: "Check the toilets first"! Proper toilets, drinking water, clean surroundings, are essential. Children should be happy to go to school, they should feel in security, and parents should be happy to send their children to school. There are 326 pupils in our Raghunatpur school, with 90% attendance. It is a Muslim area, and the main alternative there are Madrassas. Pupils come from far away to Raghunatpur and Parvatipur, so we provide a bus service. But we also don't want the people to be dependant on charity. We give children a small tiffin (a cup of milk, biscuits, own-grown vegetables), because they need that energy to work properly, but that's all. It is not a lunch. It is not an incentive. And it is not publicised.
Every Human Being need an element of security, you can't give this security only from charity. For ensuring the long-term security of our Community Schools, we raise money from Young Horizons and Children's Foundation, to gradually build a fund. So if tomorrow one of our donors says, "I'm sorry, I can't continue", our schools will not close. They will never close.
Q: But the fees at Young Horizons are very reasonable, even cheap. How can you do this?
Shourabh Mukherjee: We are able to do it! Every year we raise about 40 lakh from both schools combined, and this goes to a fund, from which only the interest is utilised. Our Community Schools, with 2000 pupils, need 2 lakh per month .
However, these schools are only a part of our work in this area of South-24-Parganas. We also encourage women and children to save money in "savings groups". 764 mothers are involved. We also have a programme to provide drinking water to 100 villages, and we have conducted an extensive research on the state of Education in West Bengal. Our programmes are focussed on one area, along the road, so that people can see that something is happening, and get involved.
Q: Since 10 years, you train your teachers with the Steiner-Waldorf method. How did you come to know Steiner's method of education?
Shourabh Mukherjee: I met Berndt Ruff in Delhi 10-12 years ago. I then visited Waldorf Schools in Germany, and I found a similarity with Tagore's Education: "Children must grow in an atmosphere of aspiration and freedom". We also exchange teachers every year with Waldorf Schools in the U.K. We have one policy guideline for all teachers. 76% of our teachers are graduate girls, against 59% in government schools. We have only female teachers. Our work is an on-going process, we permanently seek to improve our work. For example, we had a 2-day Workshop for the teachers with Dr. Uday Parekh of I.I.M. Ahmedabad, and coming month (September 2008) we will have one more with him for 5 days, on "Spiritual Leadership in School". Because, unless there is an element of spirituality you cannot give your best.
We are also organising a big social conference on 20th January, 2009, on the "U.N. Millenium Goals": "Can we keep the promise?". There will be a Youth Festival in Kolkata, with contribution from people of different walks of life, food rights, education, etc.
Khelaghar, Raghunatpur, 26 Feb. 07
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