Thane, India (AP) – Early morning at the transport intersection in Thane, a city outside Mumbai. India’s bustling financial capital is home to over 20 million people. The roads are already crowded with commuters, but the engines and corners fill the air with noise amplified overhead on the highway.
Approximately 12 young children cross the busy path, rescued by two men, and form small splashes of colour on a grey tarmac. They have arrived to attend an innovative school run by NGO Samarth Bharat Vyaspeed, using shipping containers under the highway as classrooms.
Children bathe, wear uniforms, and then send their morning meals to tea and ridge breakfast before submitting them to air-conditioned shipping containers for lessons. They learn to read and write in local Marathi and English. Practice using a computer. A simple experiment will be conducted at the Science Institute. In between lessons they play soccer and traditional sports Kabaddy.
The school is a daytime sanctuary, and promises some of the city’s poorest children with a safe environment and three nutritious meals. In the evening, they return to homes above the edge of the metropolitan city, many improvising from cleaned corrugated steel plates, plywood boards and tarpaulins.
Vaishari Pawal, 10, and her two brothers attend a signal shara, named after the signal.
“My brother has never been to school and is a motorist. One sister has been married, and I want to be an artist,” says Pawar.
Her parents were reluctant to send their children, but they were told by the school.
Since 2016, schools have been preparing children like Vaishari to appear in formal exams conducted by the state board of education. According to its webpage, 57 students are enrolled in schools and strive to “take such children into the mainstream of society by addressing not only their educational needs but also their health and emotional well-being.”
Sonari Gautam Gayakuwad, 14, says that if she hadn’t been admitted to school, she would have been married by now.
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