To go out of way to make the society a better place knowing there will be nothing you will be getting back in return requires a very big heart and a firm mind. Sunil Naik, his wife Vijaya and their friend Venkatesh have been working towards educating unprivileged children with little support and yet they have been quite successful in bringing some change.
Describing how it all began Sunil clearly remembers his first visit to the scrapyard colony, he noticed a lot of kids around who were very dirty and wore no slippers, there was no proper sanitation around. The local people and their kids stayed away from them cause they claimed they were too uncultured. Hundreds of migrant labourers come to Goa every year in search of jobs, due to insufficient income even their kids are forced to join them in their work at a very early age, hence education becomes unimportant. As days passed Sunil felt a strong desire to do something for the helpless kids, so he along with his wife met Venkatesh a resident of the scrapyard colony and together they arranged activities for the children. Suprisingly the children showed interest in learning new things and appeared to be much smarter than what Sunil had initially thought.
Sunil along with his wife quickly approached the parents to send the children to a private institution, but most of the parents were not in favour of sending their children to school. As time went by in the month of July ‘15 there was one family who were willing to send their daughter to school, however others said it won’t last long but Sunil took the parents into confidence and within a week miraculously there were 17 children ready to go to school. Principal, Arun Nagvekar of Union High School, Chimbel was more than happy to accommodate the children and train them. Ophelia Braganza (teacher) put all her efforts in a process of educating & disciplining the children.
As of now there are 18 children in age group of 5 – 12 going to Union High School and approximately 25 children come every morning to preschool where different activities like games, craft making, drawing, rhymes etc are held. “The kids are progressing rapidly”, says Sunil, who knows that he has definitely done something right.
“Slowly a lot of people are taking interest in this initiative which we have started, many people have been kind enough to donate uniforms, sandal among other things.” Sunil said.
These kids who once had no clue about education are learning to write, spell, sing, bond with others and definitely are being more cultured.
