Latest News

All the students agreed that the internship helped them realise their blessings and motivated them to contribute their time, energy, or money to the underprivileged. In today’s complex world, while governmental and intergovernmental bodies often dom... Read more at:

In her three years of visiting schoolchildren in the coastal areas of Thiruvananthapuram, one of the most upsetting encounters for Sneha was meeting Class 7 students who could not spell their own names. One boy had to fetch another with the same name because he could not pronounce the letters “sh”, she recalls, and no one had taken enough notice to find out if it stemmed from a learning disability. Sneha, a social worker with the non-governmental organisation Kanal, has been coordinating a project called Changathi (friend), which works with financially disadvantaged students in coastal areas. Project Changathi is now in its third year, attempting interventions that improve the mental and physical wellbeing of children in aided schools, along with their educational prospects. There has been some level of improvement, but there is a long way to go, Sneha says. “Students who had earlier scored below five in every subject now get 10 to 20 marks more. The progress is slow but any improvement is a good sign. You have to take into account that these were children who could hardly spell their names or do the basic additions,” Sneha says.