A 20-Year-Old Kanpur Local Turned Her Home Into A Free School

Kanpur is one of the biggest leather-industry hubs in India with many British-era tanneries running till date. These prove instrumental in providing employment to daily wage labourers that incessantly toil away in the factories in a bid to earn a few hundred rupees a day. They cram themselves into the tiny run-down houses and raise children that know little of the outside world. Here, education is a far-cry from their reality, a dream that their parents discourage them from seeing and making them an addition to earners for their family income. While times are hard and food needs to be put on the table right away, not when their offspring can finally reap the benefits of an education that will inevitably burn a textbook shaped hole in their pocket, it does make sense for them to think this way. But when it comes to the future of the children of this country, this thinking is not the way forward — a sentiment that resonates in the work of Sana Parveen, a 20-year-old who has opened-up her home and turned it into a school, of sorts, where she offers education and all the related required paraphernalia, absolutely free of cost.

A Kanpur University graduate, she recalls watching groups of unruly children outside her front door, often arguing, loitering, wasting away their youth working alongside their parents. She realised the only way the parents would be convinced to part with their child and the money they earn would be to offer an education that requires no investment from their side, least in the form of monetary payment. Compelled by her drive to help the children envision a better future for themselves, she enlisted her father’s help and went around the daunting business of persuading the tannery labourers to send them to her school. Soon, her humanitarian efforts gained traction, and today, close to 80 kids — varying in ages, regularly make their way to Sana’s house to learn. According to a report in The Better India, she focuses on a holistic primary education from pre-school level to class 5.

Sana strongly believes in the power of education and subscribes to the idea of it being the only way for an underprivileged child to move upwards in the hierarchy that exists in the socio-economic fabric of this country. Speaking to Navbharat Times she said, “The area I am residing and working in is very backward vices. I truly believe education is the only thing that can pull them out and transform their lives. I want to help them become better and responsible citizens of the country. We have children from all religions and castes studying here. Most of them are extremely underprivileged. So, all it required for me to convince their parents to send them to school was a free education.” Where the government and authority bodies are failing to get children of our country into schools to have better opportunities in the future, Sana is among those individuals who have set a great example for the rest of us takin it upon themselves to help those in need.

Representational feature image courtesy of Akshaya Patra/Pixabay

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