71st Independence Day: Acknowledging small yet important efforts

On the eve of Independence Day, children were quite excited as they were going to be part of double celebration the next day. Early morning, they were to attend school for flag hoisting followed by a small cultural program. Later, around 10:00 am Door Step School (DSS) team had also organised short fun filling program for parents and children in various construction sites.

As soon as the team arrived at various sites, children and their parents assembled to an open space. They were all informed about the celebrations but were unaware of the fact that they will also be asked to participate. At every site, DSS team addressed the gathering with the information on importance of tricolour flag. Later, parents expressed their will to share a few words too. In Digdhi Construction site a parent, namely, Najma Sayyed Khan, happen to share her thoughts. She said, “this is my first year of sending my daughter to school. This morning while dressing her up for Independence Day, I felt as if I am in dreams. I use to question myself whether I’ll ever be able to send her to school. Never thought with the kind of money that we earn, schooling was possible for our children. It was the awareness on RTE that was imparted to us by Sir (Sadashiv, a supervisor at DSS) earlier this year when we had just migrated to this site make this dream come true. I thank them all. Jai Hind!”

Photo: Najma addressing one-and-all present there.

Parents were involved along with the children. Recreational games like musical chair, passing the ball, balancing a book on head, lemon and spoon, etc were being played at different sites.

Photo: Parents participation in recreational activities

Children were equally excited to share their time spent in school. “teacher, aaj hum school paidal gaye the. Gaadi ko chhuti thi na. School me humne jhanda geet gaya aur hume rashtra gaan bhi ata hai toh who bhi gaya. Sunaye? !”

Photo: Group of girls presenting a song

Entire team of Door-Step School, would like to express their gratitude towards all those volunteers present at various sites and contributed in every way possible.

Photo: A volunteer seen distributing packets of biscuits among all the children present.

With the aim to spread awareness among migratory labours that schooling of their children is possible, DSS team could get active parents involvement in their children’s education this past one year. Without missing out on the opportunity to acknowledge parents and their efforts, Team DSS tried celebrating the day with a meaning.

Few Facts and Numbers: Under Every Child Counts campaign, 13 Centres were covered involving minimum of 600 parents and close to 715 children in total.

Under Project Foundation, 45 centres were covered.

We await the next Independence Day with a guaranteed excitement and joy to be shared with you all!