Putting children back to school
BARABANKI (UTTAR PRADESH): The Leprosy Mission Trust India’s (TLMTI) WEALTH project recently mobilised women from 17 self-help groups and school staff in 11 villages of Ramnagar and Fatehpur blocks in Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh (UP) to conduct community-led rallies to raise awareness about education among the people in these villages.
It was part of TLMTI’s ‘School Chalo Abhiyan’, a campaign to bring dropouts (between the ages of 6-14) back to school.
The encouraging part of this campaign is, due to this initiative, 23 girls and 43 boys who had earlier dropped out of schools got re-enrolled in their respective schools.
A fourth of UP’s 200 million people are aged between five and 14 years – India’s largest child population. But the dropout rate at schools in the state is around 9 per cent. This contributes to the low literacy rate of 69.72 per cent in the state.
One of the objectives of TLMTI’s WEALTH project is to support children in getting a proper education – and hence the project started ‘School Chalo Abhiyan’.