Palghar's 'school on wheels' helping children stay in touch with books

Knowledge on Wheels, was started by Keshav Srushti, an NGO, under its rural development programme, Keshav Srushti Gram Vikas

Around 3,500 children from some villages in Palghar district, who do not have access to the Internet, are staying in touch with books and general knowledge, thanks to a 'school on wheels.' A minibus with 1,100 books in three different languages and other educational material along with a teacher on board, has been making periodic visits to these villages for over a month now."

The initiative, started by an NGO from Bhayandar, is aimed at keeping the village children busy with academic activities and engagements, while schools are closed.

The initiative titled, Knowledge on Wheels, was started by Keshav Srushti, under its rural development programme, Keshav Srushti Gram Vikas, which has been working for the development of villages in Palghar district for some time. While the NGO has been actively working in these villages in multiple areas such as agriculture, education, health, women empowerment, etc. this new initiative was born a couple of months ago after seeing that children here were completely cut off from education after schools closed down due to the pandemic. The initiative is being executed with all safety precautions in place such as social distancing and sanitisation of all items on the bus.

The initiative was started with financial aid from Indian Railway Construction Company Limited

'Trained teacher on board'

"This bus has books in Marathi, Hindi and English, and on a variety of topics from education to story books, biographies of respected personalities to those on general knowledge and patriotism. Other than allowing children to read from these books, the teacher on board holds small sessions on easy-to-learn topics, or conducts science experiments with some academic material on board. There is a proper weekly schedule for the bus that covers around 60 villages. The teacher has to keep notes on which sessions were held for a specific village so that they are not repeated," said Santosh Gaikwad, a trustee of the NGO, adding that the teacher is a well-educated individual who has been given special training on effective interaction with children from villages. The idea is to have a trained professional to engage with these children, who are from varied age groups and different classes, but visit the bus as one group.

Plans for more buses

This bus initiative has been started with financial help from the Indian Railway Construction Company Limited and the NGO plans to start two more such buses to cover more villages. "There are a total of 75 villages in different tehsils of Palghar district - Wada, Mokhada, Jawhar and Vikramgad - but some of them are really far away and with one bus it is not easy to cover all without a huge gap in visits. So, currently, we are covering 60 villages and plan to introduce more such vehicles to cover all villages," said Gaikwad, who, along with another trustee, Vimalji Kedia, is currently working on raising funds for this. Around 3,500 students have benefitted from this service until now. The bus village is parked in an open space in a village such as a ground where children are allowed in with masks. If a child does not have one, there are some kept on the bus for such children and every child is allowed entry after his/her hands are sanitised. Science experiments and other group sessions are held on the ground adhering to the social distancing norms.

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