Teaching them the basics of life

If you thought that today’s school students are all interested in parties and mall hopping just think again. There are students who have dared to break such stereotypes by pushing the frontiers of their initiative. This is what two school students — Nanki Aneja of Subhadra Colony near Shastri Nagar and Anmole Jain from Pitampura, both students of class IX — just decided to do when they took up the noble cause of teaching the importance of hygiene to the little slum kids. As part of their curriculum project, Anmole and Nanki along with two other girls went to the slum area near Inderlok, Daya Basti to deliver health talk. Female foeticide and sanitation were the other topics taken up by them.

Since routine health talks make the session quite dull and uninteresting, the students preferred to drive home the message among these kids through an interactive street play. They even practised the street play five times before the D-day.

For Anmole, this was an entirely new experience to enter a slum area and see how the other half lives, where things are not so hunky dory. "I could never imagine this aspect of life, where nothing seems to be in place. I was shocked to see these kids living amidst the filthy surroundings," says Anmole while describing her experience at Daya Basti. Unlike Anmole, Nanki was a little more experienced. "I have visited these places a couple of times earlier to hold camps with my father. It was fun to interact with the kids as they responded quite fast," says Nanki.

While talking to the slum dwellers, these two girls got to know that the latter were aware of cleanliness in their homes. "These slum children didn’t know how to keep things in a proper manner. So we told them how this would also affect their health and that they need to keep their surroundings clean as well," said the girls. For these girls this special session will remain etched forever in their memories. "What made us proud was that eventually when we were about to wind up the programme, the kids just didn’t let us go and wanted us to continue," say Anmole and Nanki while sharing the sweet memories of the event. Leading by example, the girls are always ready to repeat this act.