Akanksha Foundation, a non profit organisation working in the field of non-formal education for the less privileged children in Mumbai and Pune, seems to have taken that next vital step forward. Their dedication towards impacting the lives of the less privileged children by maximising their potential through giving them a strong educational foundation and imparting good values to them, has started to bear fruit. A substantial number of these children are now on a mission to give back to the society.

From class five onwards at the Akanksha School, service has been an integral part of the curriculum. The teachers do various service projects with the children to help them understand the importance of ‘giving back to society’ and to ‘be the change’ they wish to see in the world. This gradually evolves into the Social Leadership Program aimed at children above 15 years of age who are selected based on the motivation and inclination they show to make a difference starting with their own communities.

They then plunge into a two-year programme that involves giving them in-depth knowledge on issues like child abuse, gender discrimination and so on while Sunday classes are held on current affairs, leadership and teambuilding. A project and internship at an NGO are the other two important modules of this programme that complete the course.

Chand Sayyed Shaukat who has recently passed out of Dr Zakir Hussein Urdu High School and who had spent eight years of his life at the Akanksha School has been participating in various programmes on child labour awareness and against female infanticide of late. This is part of his internship programme.

“We have been going door to door asking people to help wipe out the menace of child labor and did various projects on child sexual abuse. We also tried to propagate the importance of tackling environmental problems for a secure future,” says Shaukat, who wants to become a sports coach later in life.

Then there’s Mahesh Vishnu Londhe who has been in Akanksha since the past eight years. “This place teaches you the worth of service,” says the boy who remembers the time he went with others to provide food to workers engaged in construction of flyovers in the city. “They earn a meagre amount after a hard days toil and have to spent almost all of it on food. Hence we decided to provide some succour to them,” he explains.

Like Londhe and Shaukat, Akanksha has students who worked at Kagaz Kanch Patra Kashtakari Sanghatna. They went to the SNDT university and learnt about waste management and composting and then made visits to colonies in Pune to make people aware about the importance of separating dry and wet waste. They also conducted a survey on the number of rag pickers in their community and learnt about their lifestyles.

Even as these children learn to give back to the society they are realising that their own growth also attains new dimensions-like acquiring the confidence to speak to strangers and the sense of achievement of witnessing their words having a positive impact.

The children who worked with CYDA were given the responsibility of teaching children in a community in Phulenagar the basics of English. They did face a lot of challenges as the children they were teaching were older than them and they had to go to the community and get them to come to class. They also helped CYDA document and compile data on homeless children in Pune. The biggest learning the kids said was that they now realised how difficult it was to be a teacher and also how important it is to spread education

and awareness among more young people.

“Some of our children helped at a summer camp for the children of brick kiln workers which was organised by the Indian Sponsorship Committee. They assisted in conducting the activities for the children. It was a great learning experience for them as they got to work with younger children and learnt about how to conduct activities and manage them. It gives them a lot more confidence,” says Evangeline Ambat, coordinator of the SLP programme.

The children who went to Masum, researched on child sexual abuse and its occurrence in India especially in Pune. They plan to help conduct a survey to know more about the issue and make people aware about it.

“There are equally passionate older students-didis and bhaiyas who help these children make a difference. However as an organisation it is our biggest challenge to find individuals who are willing to work with these children to make a difference in their lives and in turn help them bring a change in our own society,” adds Ambat.