Bridge Schooling Program
Education in India is (supposedly) mandatory, and yet we have large numbers of children who have never attended any school. We see this a lot in street-children or children whose parents put them straight into work or begging. The parents, and as a consequence, the children see no point in gaining an education. When these children arrive in our centres, we provide what we call Bridge Schooling, to introduce them to the whole concept of paying attention, learning, growing, determination and eventually, some kind of qualification with a positive future.
We also provide non-formal education to children of homeless families living on the streets, and to runaway children loitering around public places. These children usually work as rag pickers, beggars or selling petty items. Their parents/ guardians are reluctant to send them to school, and so the children are deprived of even basic education.
CoME provides a bridge-school (non-formal education and functional literacy) to these children as well as counselling them and their families, so that they can join the main-stream school system smoothly, in a short period of time.
This includes providing text books and education materials, school uniforms, shoes, socks, lunch and tuition fee for one year to the children.
Our Bridge Schooling Program operates in three of our centres.
Our Delhi Bridge Schooling Program needs to be improved and expanded so that it can operate year-round and cater for the many disadvantaged children trapped in the slums just outside our centre.
Expenditure
The expenses incurred by this Program include:
- Wages for our staff, and part-time workers
- Consumables like paper, pens, chalk etc.
- Desks and chairs
- Uniforms for the children
- One year school fee
Resources
We have a Schooling Manager who co-ordinates our teaching resources across all of the centres. As well as this, each of the centres which provide Bridge Schooling has:
- A Head Teacher
- One or more Bridge Schooling teachers
- Classrooms at our centres (or nearby in the case of Pharsar)
Read about the Next Program.
