A passion for learning results in a school for India's poorest children

As his little backyard school has won notice across India, Babar has traveled to receive honors in Bangalore, Delhi, and Mumbai (Bombay). But his school remains very much a local community effort. A dozen young volunteer teachers follow a government-approved curriculum covering English, math, history, and Bengali.

Chumki Hajra, 14, has been teaching ever since she graduated from the school's eighth grade two years ago. In the mornings she cleans two family homes to earn $11 a month. Then she heads to a local high school.

As soon as her own classes let out, she hurries to Babar's to spend the next four hours teaching. The walk back to her family's mud hut, in the dark, takes an hour and a half.

"I studied here without paying anything," she explains. "And I want to give them the chance that I got."

Chumki's grandmother, Tulu Hajra, is an unsmiling, illiterate woman who serves as the school's security patrol. She ekes out a living selling fish in the morning. After lunch, she grabs a switch and walks from house to house, herding local children to the school. She stops traffic on the nearby highway to help them cross, then stands guard at the gate to make sure local adults don't disturb their studies.

"If they don't study, they'll turn out like me," she says. "This is the only chance they have."

Babar's story spread worldwide last fall after the BBC ran a report about his school. Among those who saw it was a young woman in Orange County, Calif., Manjaree Ghosh.

Ms. Ghosh, a former financial analyst, was born in India. She decided to help by raising funds for a proper school building. She called friends and relatives, asking for donations. Eventually she teamed up with a Los Angeles-based foundation called the Deenabandhu Trust – Friends of the Poor.

In mid-April, Ghosh joined a few India-based philanthropists on a visit to Babar's school. The afternoon was sweltering, and the group clustered in front of two whirring fans in Babar's small office. They looked through the school's record books, met with local officials, and discussed the obstacles to building on a small plot of land Babar had purchased with donations.

"On the one hand," Ghosh says, "meeting him just reinforces the fact that he is a 17-year-old kid. But on the other hand ... I have to admit that there is something in this kid, there is something that made him start this whole school, that made him feel very passionately. He, more than anybody else I've met, feels very, very strongly about education."

Once his visitors left, Babar headed back to his school, taking a turn teaching English to the older students. Nearby, a gaggle of chickens squawked. Trucks honked as they sped past on the highway. The yard filled with the sounds of children: giggling, crying, reading aloud, singing, questioning ... learning.

•Contact the Deenabandhu Trust – Friends of the Poor – at deenabandhu.org

•For more stories about people making a difference, go here.
 

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