Odisha HRD

Ruchika: If a child can not come to school, then the school must come to the child

October 28th, 2007

Hindu magazine has a heart warming story on the Ruchika School and Ruchika Social Service Organization. A documentary film on Ruchika narrated by Robert Redford and shown in PBS is here. Following is an excerpt from Hindu article.

A young housewife, new to Bhubaneswar, started a pre-school in her house with two students: her sister’s daughter and the gardener’s daughter. Soon, she put up a small board, “Ruchika” on the gate. This attracted curious neighbours who got used to seeing a couple of children laughing and playing with a lady in the “posh” Forest Park house. The number of tiny tots soon grew to 11 and then 20.

Soon after, she started a school in a rented building. Ruchika was a school with a difference. Teachers took the students out to post-offices and railway stations, banks and bridges to give them a “feel” of what they learn in books, and “see” how things work. Every day, the lady saw a number of children from nearby slums peeping in at the gate. “But I didn’t have the freedom to open my own gates to those poor semi-clad children. We have stratified our society that way. That really hurt,” she now says.

Whenever she went to the railway station, she saw children with bright faces wiping compartment floors and begging from passengers. Inderjit Khurana’s husband was an engineer in the Army, and the Khuranas had moved to Bhubaneswar in 1970s. When asked what brought them to Bhubaneswar, Inderjit smiles, “Destiny”.

Idea that worked

Inderjit often thought of the children outside her gate and those bright faces covered with grime. She hit upon the unique idea of “Platform schools”. If a child cannot come to the school, the school should go to the child! She asked teachers in Ruchika if they would volunteer to teach the “platform children” early in the morning before they started their regular work. Only one, R.P. Dwivedi, the physical training instructor, agreed “provided you don’t sack me if I say ‘no’ after one month”. Ruchika’s Platform School was born, with one frail lady and a physical training instructor marking the boundaries of the “school” with chalk in one corner of the Bhubaneswar railway platform. The duo went with toys, paper, crayons, soap and towels. Platform children flocked in and “it was a joy to see them bathing and laughing. They drew, talked and asked very intelligent questions”, recalls Inderjit 27 years later.

Entry Filed under: K-12,Special K-12 Schools