Education for 600 Vulnerable Children in Kolkata

Mansur is 11 years old. He lives in a hut made of bamboo poles with a plastic roof and a mud floor in the Park Circus Railway Squatter community, a vast shanty town stretched out along the railway tracks beside Park Circus Station in Central Kolkata, India. Here many families subsist through rag picking, begging and other very low paid daily labour. Mansur lives with his grandmother, once a rag picker but who now begs for a living (earning just 50 – 60 rupees a day), with his parents, Shakila and Mannu, his sister and 2 uncles, aged 11 and 17. His father is a cycle rickshaw driver. He earns 5000 – 6000 rupees a month (£50 - £60).

Tiljala SHED runs after school coaching classes in its community centre right there beside the rails and Mansur is an enthusiastic attendee every day after school.

The children are fortunate to have Mehnaz as their teacher and she reports that he is a very bright boy. He is in class VII in a local government school. Schools were closed for over a year during the pandemic and many children from vulnerable families dropped out. Boys as young as 10 find menial work in factories or informal restaurants to help support their struggling families. They soon drop out of school altogether finding the money more motivating than their school work and end up illiterate and faced with a life of poverty and hard labour.

Lockdown was particularly hard for families like Mansur’s. Mannu couldn’t go out to work for many weeks when India first locked down and then when he was able to go out onto the streets there was very little work.  Tiljala SHED supported Mansur’s family with dry rations during this time.

Despite the terrible hardships Mansur and his family must have endured over the last 18 months, Mansur returned to the coaching centre as soon as it opened again and is now happily back at school.

Thanks to your support, we at Tiljala SHED will continue to provide the support and encouragement he needs to stay in education because that is his only hope for a better future.

This programme provides daily after school coaching for 600 children from extremely vulnerable households. Alongside their academic studies they enjoy singing, especially in English, art and other creative activities. Through our Child Protection programme we ensure the children are safe both inside and outside the home and we help them to understand their rights.

Thank you as ever for your generous support. It costs just £11 a month to provide all this for a child like Mansur. 

It costs £30 a month to sponsor one of our older secondary school students working towards public exams and college