A Class IX student told a help at his home he would want to teach her. The woman refused, saying she does not need to read or write at age 60.
“You will be able to read your bank passbook and withdraw money on your own. You will not have to depend on or wait for others to do it for you,” 13-year-old Debayan Das told her and started off as a teacher.
As many as 200 students of MC Kejriwal Vidyapeeth (MCKV) in Howrah have started teaching one adult each in the vicinity of their house.
A student of MC Kejriwal Vidyapeeth in Howrah teaches an adult from his neighbourhood
Many other schools and colleges are to follow.
Rotary India Literacy Mission (RILM), which aims to teach “non-literate adults” to read and write, has been started in collaboration with schools, colleges and NGOs.
The students volunteering for the mission have to identify one adult each, who will be taught basic literacy and numeracy, digital literacy and life skills such as financial management, health and hygiene.
Each student gets 60 days to teach a non-literate adult and the sessions are based on the adult literacy primer prepared by RILM.
“Initially, didi (the help) said no. But after seeing the book (the primer) she became interested. In fact, during my final exams she was studying more than me,” said Debayan.
Imran Zaki, adviser-partnerships, RILM, said they were taking the help of students to reach out to non-literate adults.
“We are focussing more on women and trying to explain to them that once they become literate, they will be able to sign cheques and access their bank accounts themselves,” said Zaki.
“Educating a woman also means that she will understand the value of educating her children.”
But convincing the adults is not an easy task. Many of the adults said no to literacy and many others are expected to do so.
“That will be a challenge. We do not want the students to approach a stranger. They should approach someone they or their family members know. There could be people who never went to school or went for a year,” said Jhilam Roychowdhury, director, programme , RILM.
RILM’s target is to make literate 5 crore adults by 2027.
“We need to help the government in making our country literate,” said Roychowdhury.
They intend to achieve the target by following two models — Diksha (one volunteer teaches one adult) and Vidya (around 40 adults are taught by a local teacher).
A meeting to discuss the project was convened at Rotary Sadan last week. It was presided over by Rotary International past president Shekhar Mehta.
During his address, Mehta called upon stakeholders to encourage everyone to take the responsibility to make adults literate.
Some of the schools and colleges that attended the meeting were The Heritage School, The BSS School, St Stephen’s School, Bhawanipore Education Society College and Techno India Group.
“We want schools and colleges to incentivise and encourage students by giving them credit points,” said Roychowdhury.
Arnab Dasgupta, teacher at MCKV, said the students involved in the project were learning to take “responsibility of another adult and disseminate what they are learning”.
The BSS School intends to rollout the project in April so students can take it up during the summer vacation.
“We want to make it (participation in the programme) compulsory so that the students become more aware. When they come back in June after the summer vacation we would expect them to submit a report on what they have done,” said Sunita Sen, principal of The BSS School.