Vijaysinh Parmar, TNN Mar 7, 2012, 11.04PM IST
VALLABHIPUR, BHAVNAGAR DISTRICT: A year ago five-year-old Budho Rathod hated going to school. His classmates shunned him for being filthy and not taking bath daily. Budho lives with his 10-member family in a makeshift hut in a typical Devipujak locality, where there is not enough water to even drink, forget bathing.
Today, this ragpicker never misses his school. Children no more make fun of him as he his regularly bathed and shampooed too by a kelavani nirikshak (education observer) Mamta Chauhan, who has taken upon herself to ensure that children from this underprivileged community do not drop out of schools.
Mamta (36) is nothing less than a mother for all such children in the area who are simply rejected for being filthy. Since joining as education observer in 2006, Mamta during school visits found that being unkempt was the main reason why other children did not accept the kids from the Devipujak community, resulting in huge dropouts. Besides giving them a cleaner look, she also started a "clothes bank".
"Students from other communities keep distance from these students. Also, they rarely have another pair of clothes to change. This perception was affecting education of these children. So, I decided to start cloth bank and started cleaning them," Mamta says.
Her efforts spread across 64 primary schools in Vallabhipur taluka has seen the dropout ratio decrease, increased attendance by these children in the classes. In March, 2011, she organized a special programme and called about 30 children from a village, bathed them and gave them new clothes. Since last 12 months she has distributed clothes to more than 250 Devipujak students.
"There are about 1,500 Devipujak students among the total 11,000 students in 64 primary schools. We are providing at least two pairs of clothes free of costs to all these children. We only want that they should attend schools regularly," she added.
"Due to Mamtaben's efforts, my both children are now in class 9th. Otherwise, I was planning to stop their education," a Devipujak Virji Pateliya says.
A school teacher of Pipal village Alpesh Patel says, "We too adopted it and we keep all toiletries' like bucket, soaps, shampoo in school's bathroom. If we see any Devipujak children unclean, we bathe them.
A retired school teacher Ajitsinh Solanki, who was awarded the innovative teacher award by Indian Institute of Management (IIM-A), says, "Mamta's efforts are truly out of the box thinking."
Navaniya Primary School principal Deepak Joshi says, "Due to Mamtaben's innovative ways, the attendance of Devipujak children in my school has doubled to 80 per cent. There are 42 Devipujak students in our schools. Only our scholarships do not bring them schools, even compassion is important,'' Joshi adds.
