Samanta Foundation works with schools and communities situated in Haridwar district of Uttarakhand in the Northwestern Himalayas. Haridwar, with the River Ganga running through, is a significant holy site in India, culturally and economically impacted by the many religious pilgrims that visit every year. Many people migrate from other states to this locality for work, and their children make up many of the students in the government schools. Many of the parents and children rely on religious tourism for income, selling outside temples.
Haridwar is historically forest-covered — the traditional homeland of the Van Gujjars, who relied on the milk from buffalo of the forest for income. In the past two decades, much of the forest in Haridwar has been cut down to make space for the growing urban center. As a result of this, the Van Gujjars have been resettled by the Forest Department with allocations of agricultural land, just outside the remaining forest.
For my project, I received a grant to fund a visit to Uttarakhand and Guneet Sekhon, the Chief Experience Officer for Samanta Foundation, graciously invited me to see the impact of their work. Over four days, I traveled to Haridwar, visited the schools with which the foundation works, and met with their team of young, passionate educators. Each of these conversations told a story, and I want to share those stories here.
FAKE NAMES USED TO PROTECT THE PRIVACY OF PARTICIPANTS
HARISH
On the banks of the Ganga River, a community of migrant workers has been growing to take advantage of hopefully better economic opportunities in the Haridwar urban center. Harish is one of Samanta Foundation’s educators and he works at a government primary school in this community. The school is also growing. As children play in the courtyard or file into classrooms, half the buildings are under construction to support the needs of an expanding student population. In one of these buildings, has established SRC/library where first graders sit in a circle while Harish leads them through counting exercises in Hindi and English. Along one wall, picture books are neatly organized onto shelves, and along another, custom-printed books are filled with the art and writing of students.
Later, once the students have moved on to their next class, Harish explains the importance of children taking ownership of their education. The library has a “Library Management Committee” made up of one boy and one girl from each class who are in charge of checking out library books to all the students. They track the popularity of books and help decide what books the library needs to meet the desires of the students. Each class, the students update the “Word Book,” a student-developed collection of favorite, useful words. Harish, as well as all Samanta Foundation educators, facilitates a Be the Change Project, solving a challenge in the local community through combined student- and parent-led efforts.
PUSHPA
Further on, in wetlands between the river and the forests, electrified wires guard farmland from regular elephant attacks, as they come out of the forest and eat crops. Here, a large government school with combined primary and secondary classes serves the children of the agricultural laborers, a diverse mix of migrant workers and local peoples. An emergency meeting has called away all the primary school teachers, and Samanta Foundation educator Pushpa is left managing four classrooms worth of students herself. While she accomplishes this with as much grace as possible given the difficult situation, part of her success also emphasizes the importance of student leadership. When she first came to this school, she had the idea of Class Leaders, to help students develop leadership skills and take ownership of their education. In case of unexpected events like this, these children are a huge support, standing at doorways and ensuring all students are accounted for.
Pushpa is local to the area, and she emphasizes the importance of relating to the context of the community when working in the schools. While all the teachers come from outside the community and teach straight from the textbook, she has helped contextualize much of the learning content. Many parents have difficulty with Hindi and have no way to engage with their children’s education, but Pushpa speaks local dialects. She makes regular community visits and engages parents in improving and personalizing education. One success story she mentions is a student who used to climb on to tables and yell, disrupting class everyday. Teacher’s could not understand the cause of his unrest, but Pushpa was able to speak with his parents and learn his context at home that made him unhappy at school. She worked with the parents to develop a plan to better engage with the boy at school, and the transformation was clear. He went from disruptor to top three in the class within a month.
ASHA
Nearby, in a small primary school, the Anganwadi classroom has been growing to meet the expectations of the Bal Vatika scheme, promoting early cognitive development as well as physical health and nutrition. Mothers and grandmothers bring their youngest children and many stay to watch as their kids engage with the new play-based curriculum. The ball-balancing races and colorful balloon tossing might not look like the typical primary school classroom, but it engages the children in crucial, age-appropriate areas of social, physical, and emotional learning. Here, Samanta Foundation’s educator Asha further emphasizes the need to work with parents to improve child learning at this crucial developmental stage. In her experience, parents are not aware of the learning capacity of their youngest children or the role of the Anganwadi in aiding this process. To most parents, who mostly work as daily wage laborers, the only purpose of the Anganwadi is to help feed their children nutritious food. And they would be correct until recently. Now, the Bal Vatika scheme is transforming these centers into key spaces for early childhood education, and Samanta Foundation educators like Asha are playing a crucial role in explaining this new development to parents.
Asha has only been working in this school for six months, but she has already had a significant impact. She makes regular community visits, leading the Parent Learning Circle. Unlike the teachers, she is from the same community as the students, and so leading these conversations she is uniquely equipped to empathize with and engage the parents . In these visits, she knows the origins of the parent’s beliefs and can educate them on the importance of early childhood education from a place of understanding. Nutrition is a valid concern, but parents also worry their children are too young to handle the classroom environment. One of Asha’s greatest success stories comes from a recently enrolled student. The girl had struggled to adjust to the classroom, constantly upset and begging her mother to stay, just as the parents had feared. However, with the individualized support Asha provided based on meeting with the child’s parents, the girl grew to love the classroom and began commanding her mother to leave as soon as she was dropped off. Social development like this is one of the key purposes of the Anganwadi today.
HAMZA
Narrow roads weave through the tall trees of forests in Bahadrabad block, eventually opening up to a clearing of farmland with a brick-built primary school at the edge. In this school, most of the students come from the local Van Gujjar tribal community, largely earning money from animal husbandry and speaking the Gojri language. Hamza is the Samanta Foundation educator at the Anganwadi classroom here, and she further highlights the need to do more direct work with parents. One of the main misconceptions she battles is the idea that the purpose of the classroom is only to learn literacy and numeracy. When Hamza performs her community visits, she often faces pushback from parents that their children are too young to begin learning these topics or be away from home. While the Anganwadi introduces the concept of letters and numbers, the main focus is on physical, social, and emotional development.
While the majority of government teachers have too many responsibilities to focus on regularly engaging parents, the main teacher of this classroom is directly involved with community surveys, meeting mothers when they first become pregnant and tracking their children through the age of six. She faces the same challenges in convincing parents to send their children to the Anganwadi. When talking to parents she always emphasizes the important role of formal education from this age to prepare students for class one. She argues that if students begin school at class one, they will lose the whole first year just to get comfortable in the classroom setting.
Hamza, coming from the same community as the students, plays the additional role of translator for both the language and the culture of the students. This is a major barrier to education, as no formal teaching-learning materials exist in the Gojri language or for the Van Gujjar culture and the government teachers do not come from the same community. Hamza’s work helps new students transition into a new environment surrounded by a foreign language. She transforms the typical classroom activities to be context-specific for the children, making sure to use family animals when teaching numbers and play games that reflect the home with which they are familiar.
