India: Mud Walls turn into Blackboards by Sukhomoy Sen
A small tribal village of West Bengal where Deep Narayan Nayak, a school teacher who has turned mud walls into blackboards and converted the street into open air classrooms and taught children here. All educational schools were shut down after strict COVID-19 restrictions imposed across the country from March last year. According to the locals after the pandemic restriction imposed, the children of the village used to loiter and were detached with their entire educational system. Deep Narayan Nayak teaches the children everything from their schools syllabus and also made them aware of the recent situation and how to overcome this dreadful phase. He runs 11 centres across the village where 1000 of children attend their classes. Deep Narayan Nayak’s prime focus is to stop the numbers of school dropouts later which will lead these children into forced child labour practices. As these children are the first generation learners, Deep Narayan insists them to teach their mothers in the same way. Now the villagers call Deep Narayan Nayak “Raastar Mastermoshai”- in Bengali a “Street Teacher”. Paschim Bardhaman, West Bengal, India
You must be logged in to use lightbox functionality