The Beginning
In May 2020, Durgapur Adda Young Association members while distributing food packets containing Rice, Potato, Onion, Mustard oil, Sugar, Chatu, Chidwa among the extremely poor residents of ‘Kamalpur Washing Plot’ locality adjacent to Durgapur Steel Township, it was observed that the children of that locality don’t go to school and almost all the people there are illiterate.
Majority of the families here are Hindi speaking and so the child of these families going in government free primary schools mostly can’t understand anything because the medium of instruction there is Bengali and hence adds to the School Dropout list. Also, as both mother and father of these children works in the Stone Quarries, the child is left at home to do household works and are not encouraged to go to school.
Durgapur Adda Young Association members felt the need of doing something here. A large dilapidated house was noticed and the planning to set up a ‘Jeevan Path Kendra’ (Life Learning Centre) in this house was conceived.
About The Place
Though the name of Kamalpur is known to many, but only very few have heard the name of ‘Washing Plot’. The locality houses 70-80 families working in the nearby Stone Quarries. Members of these families are not even literate and are hardly aware of the need of education.
There was a 30ft by 20ft dilapidated old structure here (which the people living here are all seeing since their birth) with completely damaged floor and roof, even the four walls was not in good shape. This structure has been lying unused for more than 20 years.
The Planning
For a proper planning, a proper survey is very much essential. A 5 member team of DAYA made a survey and enrolled the names of students between the ages of 6 to 13.
The dilapidated old structure was repaired and renovated, with a cost of 90.000 INR and the “Jeevan Path Kendra” been set up in this house.
Inauguration
On 15th August 2020, “Jeevan Path Kendra” (Life learning Centre) at ‘Washing Plot’ locality of Kamalpur was inaugurated. Inaugurating the Jiban Path Kendra, eminent orthopedic surgeon of Durgapur, Hon’ble Dr. Dipankar Sen, wrote on one of the black boards of the center, “Freedom to enter the world of light” and on the other black board, the former principal of Michael Madhusudan College, Hon’ble Shri Basudeb Hazra wrote, “Let thousand flowers bloom”.
Initial Days
The “Jeevan Path Kendra” was initially running 4 days a week (Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday).
The timing was from 10 am to 1 pm and in the first half and 1 2 pm to 3:30 pm in the 2nd half.
1 pm to 2 pm was the lunch hours and nutritious lunch was provided to all the students.
Initially it was decided to make them learn Bengali alphabets and counting numbers.
The 50 odd students were divided into 2 divisions, those who have never been to school and are relatively small (mostly below 8 years) constituted ‘Nabagato’ and those who have been to school but are dropouts, constituted ‘Kisholoy’.
Present Status
One main problem of the locality was that the people here are not all permanent residents, they at times go to other place for 3-4 months for working in brick making factories. So the number of students in this “Jeevan Path Kendra” is not fixed.
Secondly, as the local government school opened up after lockdown, some students who have their names enrolled in those schools stopped coming to “Jeevan Path Kendra”.
Thirdly, some who are above 12 years started going to work in stone quarries.
Keeping all this constraint in mind several key changes were made.
We have now given more emphasis to make them learn English. This decision was taken, firstly because the students here are all Hindi speaking and secondly as they might have to move to other state in future, so having knowledge of English will help them in a big way.
The number of students is now 30 odd. These students have been divided into 3 divisions; those who are newcomers and are just 6-7 years of age constituted ‘Mukul’, those who are 7-9 years of age and have some knowledge of alphabets made up ‘Nabagato’ and those who are above 10 years and knows to read constituted ‘Kisholoy’.
The “Jeevan Path Kendra” now runs, 5 days a week (Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday).
The timing is now from 9:30 am to 1 pm and lunch is provided from 1pm; the school gets over after the lunch.