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UK ministry empowers India’s Dalits through education

Through Operation Mobilization UK’s educational sponsorship programme, India’s Dalits are being empowered to overcome their extreme poverty, reports Peter Wooding, special to ASSIST News Service.

“The Dalits were formerly known as the �?untouchables’ and they make up about 250 million people, almost a quarter of the population of India, to form into this underclass of people that fall outside of the caste system in India, and they’re known as �?scheduled’ tribes or castes, but they like the name Dalit, because it relates to the brokenness they see and the way they’ve been treated by society in India,” explained Andrew Sinclair OM’s UK’s financial development officer.

Andrew went on to explain how their educational programme among the Dalits came about: “When the Dalits were asked what can be done to help, they said: �?Educate our children in English, but also educate them with a Christian worldview’ and by that they meant a worldview which treats children with equality, dignity and respect, where we’re all created equally in the image of God and that isn’t the worldview that they’re normally operating under.

“Our partner there is now working with Dalit communities at their invitation to start English medium schools for Dalit children all over India. That came out of a meeting in 2001 where a group of Christian organizations got together to support Dalit community leaders in their struggle for emancipation and empowerment from the way the system works in India trying to get a better deal for themselves.

Schools provide revelation of equality

Andrew says as Dalit children are taught they have the same rights as everyone else it’s a new concept for them: “For Dalit children to be told �?you are created equally with everybody else in the image of God’ is an amazing revelation for them. But the schools are focusing on high quality education. They teach in English right from 4 and 5 years old up.

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“The ethos of the school is very important, that they’re treated with dignity. One of the continuing challenges India’a schools system is the marginalization of the Dalit people. The Dalit children are treated with less respect than the other children. They’re made to do menial jobs in the schools. But the children are treated equally in the schools that our partners are operating.

Educational sponsorship programme

Andrew says their sponsorship initiative focuses entirely on the child’s education: “Here in the UK we’re trying to see how we can support the work of our partners so we’ve set up an educational sponsorship programme. It’s slightly different to other programmes in that we’re just focusing on the education. The sponsorship that we run helps cover the cost of education for the child and the running costs of the school. Right now we have just over one thousand children sponsored from the UK, but one of the challenges for us is they now have 80 different schools with a total of 14,000 children.

Impacting entire communities

“The exciting thing about these schools is they have now become hubs for other projects which are actually spreading out into the local community,” explains Andrew who says their projects impact entire families.

“Most of them come from very poor families who are probably not very educated. So the whole idea of education is often new to their families. The school managers who are like social workers are hoping that families understand the benefits of education instead of just letting them work in the fields.

“We also support projects the �?women in empowerment’ programme, through self help groups which then lead to micro-finance projects. We’re also setting up vocational training for the adults and the youth of the communities, which give them skills which they can turn into better jobs.

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“As a result of us setting up income generation projects, they’re doing quite a lot of tailoring. We’re also moving into other areas and one of the newest ones we’re moving into is setting up solar lamp projects. So there’s quite a lot happening and the long term vision is to build sustainable communities. So for the Dalit people it’s all around education. As we’ve looked at other situations like human trafficking, bonded labor, education is very key to breaking some of those cycles.”

Success stories

Andrew says as their programme is seeing their first children completing their minimum education they’re seeing many success stories: “Some of these children will now go on to the next two years of education and that will allow them to go to university or college. Others will be trained in a particular trade and for us it’s very exciting to have gone through almost a complete cycle. Every year from now on, we’ll have children moving out into the next stage of education. So that’s exciting.

“There are little stories we hear of for example one family in a village where the landlord gave the rental agreement to the father in English and the father couldn’t read that. But his son had been at one of our schools and had learned to read English. So next time this landlord gave the rental agreement to the father, the son helped the father understand what it was about and they were actually able to negotiate, which is a story of empowerment.

“Also we want to focus on the health and medical issues and our vision is to have a community health worker in every school and we’re working towards that. Right now we do a medical camp of some description in most schools this year. The doctors often come in from overseas and don’t speak the language, so the children are helping translate into English for the different people that come along to the clinics. So it’s exciting to see just the attitude of the schools.

Dalits high aspirations

“I’ve been to India a number of times and when I talk to the children and ask them what are you aspirations and they want to be teachers, doctors and one says they want to be an artist,” said Andrew who went on to tell the story of a special visitor to one of their schools

“There was an exciting thing that happened last year. I was there last spring and there was a lady who was from India originally, who’s now in the United States who became India’s first astronaut. She went on the international space station with NASA, so she’s of Indian origin, so India claimed her as their own.

“She was travelling all around India and in the city where one of our schools is she was giving the prizes for a science competition. The children at one of our schools had come second place in this science competition and one of the places that these children come from is a village called the pipe village, which is like a shanty town.

“These people have been employed by this concrete factory and have been allowed to live behind the factory using the rejected concrete pipes as their homes. One of the girls from this community got to meet this astronaut, which I thought was a wonderful picture of this girl that came from such a humble, basic situation. Now through the education she’d received was able to meet India’s first astronaut.”

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TAGS: United Kingdom India educational sponsorship programme Dalits extreme poverty

[02/28/2009]

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