Volunteers in India organized school classes for village children with the help of radio broadcasts.
In India, because of the coronavirus epidemic, all schools have been closed for four months. In the cities the students could continue their studies using the Internet, but in the countryside the Internet is not always available.
That’s why volunteers from the nonprofit organization Diganta Swaraj decided to launch classes over the radio. In a number of remote villages-such as Dandwal in the forested and sparsely populated state of Maharashtra-the volunteers set up a loudspeaker connected to a radio station and organize classes for peasant children.
“It’s so nice to see kids coming and bringing their younger siblings, and you can see that they’re all in a hurry to get to class! – enthuses Shradha Sringarpur, executive director of Diganta Swaraj, an autonomous nonprofit. – And they have books and laptops; they all sit in their own seats – we drew them all where everyone sits to maintain social distance! And they obey us – they sit exactly where we told them!”
Local farmers have already dubbed the radio classes “Bolki Shaala,” which literally means “Talking School” in the local language.
“We all look forward to our morning lessons with Bolky Shaala,” said schoolgirl Kavita Chandar Yele. – The loudspeaker is turned on at 8 a.m. They put it on a chair. And we all repeat what he says. We repeat after him and sing songs, and tell stories, and learn poems, and many, many English words. We learn a lot of interesting things from this loudspeaker. We are very grateful to our brothers and sisters who host the program.
English is one of the official languages of India, along with Hindi. Mastery of it is virtually mandatory for full socialization and freedom of communication.
“When the school closed, my boy started wandering around in the forest,” rejoiced Sangita Parshuram Ele, the mother of one of the students. – Now Bolky Shaala has come to our village, too, and here my son is taking classes again. He sings songs and tells all kinds of stories, and I am happy. I have such joy when I hear him sing and tell stories; and then he dresses cleanly to go to class.”
To date, the Talking School program has already reached six villages and has been able to bring the joy of learning to about a thousand children who were left out of school after the pandemic began.