At the height of the pandemic, Dileswari Dharua, a 21-year-old intermediate college student from Balangir district acted as a Good Samaritan by teaching the academically low performing children from poor families.
Her village phuljharan is just a 10-km away from the district headquarters town of Balangir where basic amenities are lacking. Not well off financially, most of the parents depend on the Government primary school of the village for education of their children.
However, schools were shut down in the mid-March this year, as a measure to contain the spread of novel Coronavirus. “I realised that children are gradually detaching from their learning due to school shut-down. One day, Lok Unnati Sangathan, a people’s collective of Balangir was holding a meeting in our village where members were discussing to start remedial classes for academically low-performing children.
It was then I thought that kids can keep learning even during a lockdown and then became a part of their initiative,” said Dileswari.
The remedial classes, an initiative by Atmashakti Trust and its allies, like the Odisha Shramajeebee Mancha and Mahila Shramajeebee Mancha, Odisha, under the campaign Mission 3-5-8, are being run in 36 villages across the district where nine members from the organization along with 27 local youth volunteers are taking up remedial classes for 216 children every day.
Dileswari lost her father in 2018 and now she has to shoulder the burden of her family with a mother and two brothers.
However, she stood firm with her conviction to help poor children pursue their studies as she believes the importance of education very deftly and therefore devoting two-hours of remedial teaching every day for children upto class-V in her village.