Do their homework on the benches set up along the sidewalks of a busy street, in the poor outskirts of an Indian city: this is how the more than one hundred students of the Footpath School study, a sort of after-school program conceived 15 years ago by a small businessman from Ahmedabad, Kamal Parmar, to support children of the most disadvantaged classes in learning the different school subjects and in preparing for exams.
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Doing their homework on benches set up along the sidewalks of a busy street, in the poor outskirts of an Indian city: this is how the more than one hundred students of the school study. Footpath School, a sort of after-school program conceived 15 years ago by a small businessman from Ahmedabad, Kamal Parmar, to support children of the most disadvantaged classes in learning the different school subjects and in preparing for exams.
The story of Parmar, told in the touching documentary Footpath School, which you can find at the bottom of this article, begins one afternoon 15 years ago, when the man, standing in front of his garage, sees some boys passing by returning from the municipal school, all cheerful, and stops them to ask why of so much contentment.
The boys explain to him that they have just passed an exam: then Parmar asks them some rather simple questions, eventually discovering, to his great disappointment, that those students, who also attended a school, were unable to read.
In the following weeks, Parmar interviews about four hundred boys and girls in the area and discovers that only five of them are actually capable of reading and writing. So, in his mind, the idea of creating an after-school program was born: a place where those children, coming from poor or very poor families and, in most cases, illiterate, can receive real support and real education. Free of charge, of course.
In the beginning, his idea was to tutor a small group of young people, welcoming them to his home after work and teaching them above all to read, write and do arithmetic. But over time the project becomes bigger and bigger: also because, every evening, Parmar has the habit of having a dinner with his students on the sidewalk in front of the shop he manages. A ritual that, over time, attracts a growing number of boys and girls, significantly increasing the number of after-school students.
Today the Parmar school has 115 students, mostly girls, and is open almost all year round, from 17.30 to 21.30. The benches and tables at which the children work were made by himself and his family and about 20-25 of the meals consumed each month by the students are made available thanks to the donations that the project, which has become more popular every year, receives . Parmar, who has left the company he ran to his two children, is in charge of the school full-time, studying in turn to be able to meet the needs of his children.
In addition to Parmar himself, the teaching is also carried out by his children, by volunteers who come from different parts of the world and by former students, who they return "to the sidewalk" to give the gift back to other children they received from this very special school. And, although the little students study on the edge of a busy street, in a noisy environment that does not encourage concentration, their will to learn is enormous and the results they are able to achieve are tangible.
“A recent student of mine she became a manager at a bank, one of the students became a computer engineer, another became a mechanical engineer, and one of the girls applied for medicine. And the list goes on. " - he says proudly Parmar - “Think about it: some children who were unable to read and write are now engineers and doctors and managers of a bank. For me this is success. "
Some of the boys and girls they also received financial support from Parmar: the man took charge of their school fees, allowing them to continue with their studies and access university education.
And this is how, for 15 years, this sixty-year-old with white hair has been performing a great little miracle every day, offering very poor children, who seemed condemned to remain forever on the margins of society, a concrete opportunity to build a better future. and become masters of their own lives. Hats off, Mr. Parmar!
Lisa Vagnozzi
Photo Credits: Footpath School
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