The pandemic shook the World. The government responded. Lockdown was imposed. Life halted. The year 2020 came with unprecedented challenges. The Pandemic called for immediate relief and the need to develop long term resilience and future preparedness. When the lockdown was announced each one of us at Vimukti could not stop our minds from wandering into streets of the slum areas where our girls live. Most of the parents of our girls are daily wagers and casual workers who live a day at a time, survived on their daily wages, with no savings to fall back on in the times of crisis.Vimukti and the Edu-Girls team started to brainstorm- what should we do in such a strange and unimaginable situation? The families need to know about Covid and understand the precautionary hygiene measures. Would they have enough food to sail through another day? Instantly the teachers started making contact with the students’ parents, briefed them about the precautionary measures and inquired about their wellbeing.

THE FIGHT AGAINST HUNGER

Soon we realized that the fight against hunger should be our priority. We started to gather funds. We reached out to all our students’ families with Ration Kits sufficient to support their food needs for a month. We distributed ration again during the 2nd phase of nationwide lockdown.

“My mother runs a tea-stall and the only bread-winner in our familyas my father is no more. The months under lockdown were very hard. We did not have enough food and had cut down on our meals. Thankfully, my school helped my family during the tough times. We received ration enough to last a month during both the lockdowns. It was a blessing!” –Preeti Meena, Student of class XI

             

Muskaan’s mother was suffering from Covid when we approached the family with ration Kit. Muskaan, a student of class 5, lives with her 2 siblings, mother and father in a one room accommodation. Her father is a daily wager and was out of work for almost two months then. The family was barely managing their food needs, arranging for medical and hygiene supplies was a humongous task.We took cognizance of the situation and immediately reached out to the family with a Medical and hygiene kit and assured them of continued ration support. Ration kit was supplied to the family 3 times. With God’s grace, Muskaan mother recovered.

GIRLS MUST STUDY

20 days into the Pandemic lockdown, we started to find ways to continue educating the girls. The teachers promptly started working on lesson plans and worksheets that were then being shared with the students over Whatsapp. Books and stationery for the new academic session were distributed alongside the ration kits. However, many challenges erupted. Around 60- 80 students, had gone back to their native villages and we lost complete contact with them. Hardly 100 students out of the remaining 520 had access to a working smartphone.

Edu-GIRLS was determined to bridge this digital gap that our less-privileged girls were facing. To ensure that the education of girls is not hampered, byOctober2020, 410 Lenovo tablets were distributed to students from grade 1 to 12. The tablets were loaded with Diksha App covering the NCERT syllabus. Online classes beganvia Zoom and class tests and exams were conducted using google forms.Workshops were also conducted for the mothers of young students to acquaint them with the use of tablets.

                                                                                          

 

Performance of the girls in the centralized State board examination proved that our efforts had paid off! The number of students who scored distinction increased by 55% in the year 2020-21 ascompared to that of 2019-20. The girls had outperformed the cumulative Board result.