Making it to top universities, shining in conferences with students across the world and going on to build careers as chefs, actors and corporate professionals at top companies – these are dreams that are now within reach for children from some of the poorest neighbourhoods in the city. As schools across the city marked Teachers’ Day over the weekend, Shukla Bose, founder-CEO of Parikrma Humanity Foundation, who has been helping children from Bengaluru’s slums reach for their dreams through English education for 23 years, shares, “They are first-generation learners with both parents being illiterate, and here they are, going to institutes like IIM, NLSIU and IIIT, places where even a middle-class child would not have easy access to. Around 98 to 99 per cent of our children are going for higher studies.”
This achievement stands out against the backdrop of Karnataka’s secondary-school dropout rate of 18.1 per cent. Bose credits what she calls the ‘Parikrma way’, an approach that also addresses students’ healthcare. “How can a student pay attention in class if he is unwell or hungry?” asks Bose, adding, “Ninety-eight per cent of fathers of our students are alcoholics, 92 per cent come from households where someone is imprisoned. So we have to design our curriculum and administrative processes accordingly – skill programmes, parenting classes, self-help groups and financial literacy classes to help bring in stability and purpose.”
Starting with 167 students on a rooftop in Koramangala in 2003, the foundation has grown to teach 1,700 students across four centres and one junior college. Located in rural Karnataka is Parikrma Oxygen, a ‘nature school’ where students are ‘camping out, conversing with nature, growing a nursery, rewilding the space and learning maths in the open air,’ she says.
While a quality English education, delivered by teachers who are sent on exchange programmes, is non-negotiable, extracurricular activities are equally important. The foundation hosts a national-level annual inter-school football tournament as well as the Parikrma Festival of Science, which brings science experts into classrooms.
The children are supported through a less material challenge too. Bose adds, “Psychological poverty holds children back too; they ask themselves, ‘Nobody in my family has done it, so do I need to?’ Recently, our children represented the country at The Global Youth Leadership Summit among 170 countries. They can compete on equal terms, not waiting for people to feel sorry for them, but fighting and finding their rightful place – that is what we are teaching.”