Sukriti's SAS Blog: Children Here and Children There

Recently our school had a weeks holiday for spring break. During spring break, I traveled to India, specifically New Delhi. I had volunteered to work with kids that are from poor families that couldn't afford education. The fathers of these families usually drove rickshaws (3 wheeled taxis of India), or had small stands on the streets. Not much of an income comes from those occupations.

I had volunteered at an organization called Vidya and Child. Here, they enroll kids from these kinds of families, teach them up till 6th grade, and then enroll them in mainstream schools. Mainstream schools are proper schools that go up till 12th grade. I worked with a group of around 18-20 3rd graders, and I made friends with some of the older kids. While I was there, I noticed two main differences between them and us,

One: The kids loved math. That was their favorite subject by far. At SAS, I dont know may people that have math as their favorite subject, so I was pretty surprised.

Two: The last main difference I noticed was that they really wanted to learn. In SAS, we take this school for granted and do not pay as much attention to classes as we could, myself included. But there, even 3rd graders seemed to realize that not many people from their kind of family get the chance to be educated. They know that they should work hard and think about how this will make a huge impact in the future, so they dont have to work as rickshaw drivers like their parents. I found that really amazing.

I loved working with those kids and am glad I get to work with them again this summer!