Our Upcoming Projects
Humari Pathshala
India is home to about 160 crore people of which roughly 42 crores are in the 0-14 years age bracket. A large part of the child population is constituted by street children, who are homeless and deprived of most facilities that a regular child is entitled to as a human being. While some censual bodies have estimated the number to be 1.8 crores, the others have identified 20 lakh street kids. These are said figures as there is no reliable official data on the number of street children in the country. The huge disparity between the two estimates itself suggests the urgent need for a centralized database. One thing that is certain is that, India has the largest number of street kids in the world.
It has been estimated that more than 10 lakhs street children dwell in each of the following metropolitan cities: Mumbai, Kolkata, and Delhi. In Kolkata itself, there are about 1 lakh identifies street kids, living with no shelter and no protection. These street kids can be usually found in tourist spots such as near Park street, Victoria Memorial, Science City and Sealdah and Howrah Station. Lebutala, Gobra, Natun Pally, Phool Bagan, Jorabagan bus stand and Park Circus account for 85% of street kids in Kolkata.
The street kids are vulnerable to violence, oppression, exploitation and physical and mental abuse. They are deprived of the basic health facilities and education rights. Although many NGOs and Human Rights organization have taken the baton to provide for these kids, nothing much has been done in the education frontline.
We, in Team HUM, believe that education is not a luxury but a basic human right. Education not only has the power to transform lives but is capable of bringing light to darkness. Since 2019, Team HUM has been working tirelessly to provide education to underprivileged children under PROJECT JUGNU. Since then, we have started remedial classes in different slums and underprivileged areas in and around Kolkata. We now conduct teaching classes in Salt Lake (Kolkata), Palm Avenue (Kolkata), Raghunathpur (Sundarbans), Murshidabad, and Darjeeling. Recently we have started teaching the street kids living under the Park Street flyover. With God’s grace and Team’s effort, we have received very positive response in all locations, with minimum 50-60 students enrolled in all centers.
With the hope of continuing and expanding our educational initiative, Team HUM has come up with the concept of “HUMARI PATHSHALA” to provide education for street children. “HUMARI PATHSHALA” is the brain child of our Founder Md. Nawaid Akhtar. He has envisioned this concept of teaching street kids in school buses across the Kolkata city. This concept has been planned drawing inspiration from similar initiative taken in Mumbai, Gujrat, Assam and Bengaluru. The key component of the project is a bus designed as a mobile class room to provide alternate educational facilities to street children and pavement dwellers. The plan is to park the mobile classroom buses in areas with majority street kids’ population and provide basic education to them In a safe and classroom-like environment. If the educational project draws positive response, Team Hum plans to incorporate embroidery classes for older girls and women to empower them to find more respectable means of livelihood.
Following a lifecycle approach, Team HUM, one of the Good NGO in Kolkata, works intensively through focused welfare projects in four major areas child education for poor children, Food for All, skills training and livelihood for youth, and community engagement through women empowerment.