Learning Camps

Lack of education has always been one of my deepest concerns. I can’t help but wonder about the number of children whose lives and dreams are sacrificed because of lack of education.
This issue really bothered me and I just wanted to do something about it. Rather than waiting to grow older to take some action, I decided to initiate something. Learning camps.

The idea was to teach underprivileged children English, ICT and Character Building through student volunteers from our school. This meant, I had to gather Underprivileged children, devise a plan, a syllabus and take approval from school authorities, and gather student volunteers. I knew from start, that this would take up a lot of time and effort, and so a few of my friends suggested me to not continue with it as my “CAS Project” was already over. But the fire in kept me going.
I was confused of where to start. After a lot of thinking, I came up with the idea of orienting the didi’s and Bhaiya’s in my school about the learning camps and gather their kids and teach them. In order to communicate with them effectively, I had to use their native language, Gujarati, for all communications. Though I know Gujarati very well, it was a challenge for me to type and create presentations and forms online in Gujarati. It took me about 3 hours and lots of google translates to finally come up with a presentation and a participation form. Slowly and steadily everything fell into place. Volunteers and kids were all ready. After about a month of planning, the day had finally arrived when we began the learning camps.

The learning camps were after school. Which meant, that after 9 hours of school, we had to stay back in school till 7:30in the evening and teach these children. The challenge in the start was that there weren’t enough student volunteers for 5 days. So in the first two weeks, I stayed back thrice a week, went to school and studied for my 12th. Despite the extremely busy schedule, I kept going on and stayed committed to this project.

Through this project, I learned about the difference children can make. I learnt about my level of commitment to something I so dearly loved doing. And I learnt about the extent to which I could work hard, and keep going.