It takes Riya, a resident of Bhogal, more than an hour — first in a bus and then in an e-rickshaw — to reach her destination in south-west Delhi’s Dwarka . But that hasn’t deterred the 15-year-old from making the journey regularly for eight long months.
Reason: A parallel education programme being run by NGO Plan India to provide quality education to underprivileged girls like Riya. The programme is run at 12 different locations in Delhi, including Dwarka, Holambi Kalan, and Rangpuri Pahadi.
The NGO launched these classes in April 2016, in collaboration with Ericsson India.
“I used to think that digital classes were meant for students of private schools only. Now that I and several other girls like me are attending these digital classes, I have realised that this is just a matter of opportunities,” said Riya, a student of Class IX at a government school in Lajpat Nagar.
At Plan India’s learning centers, girls are taught via video conferencing, wherein a teacher sitting at the main center of the locality takes live classes.
Students sitting in different centers learn by watching and listening to the teacher, and can even cross-question her or him. There is one moderator in every class to help the students.
“Initially, it was difficult to teach these children as they did not know what a projector or a microcomputer was. But now they have understood many things and it has become easier to teach them digitally,” a class moderator at a Dwarka center said.
“Most parents we contacted were not interested in sending girls for these evening classes. They were not ready to do so even during vacations,” said an NGO member.
“As many as 450 girls are actively attending the classes at our different centers in Delhi now and more than 470 girls have already enrolled for the upcoming session,” the member added.
Source: DNA India