School for thought

A quiet, young boy begins to visit his school library everyday after classes are over. At first, he goes just to look at the colourful illustrations in the books brought to the school by smiling didis and bhaiyyas. When asked why he stays back, he replies, “This is the world I want to stay in. This makes me happy.” The didis and bhaiyyas who stocked the library are from the NGO Mantra4Change.

 The idea for Mantra4Change took shape in the minds of Khushboo Awasthi and her partner Santosh More in 2010. “Deep inside us was the strong belief that if there is anything that can change the future, it is  through education. When children don’t have access to quality education, their life choices shrink. It was these beliefs that triggered the concept for Mantra4Change,” Khushboo elaborates.

 Mantra4Change’s key initiative is ‘STEP’, the School Transformation and Empowerment Project. Through STEP, and a two-year partnership to ensure its efficacy, most of the schools they work with cater to underprivileged children from the less popular, narrow alleys of urban and peri-urban Bengaluru.

 Khushboo and her team believe that students must be empowered and encouraged to step out of their comfort zone. She shares a story of how 12 students from Mantra4Change partner schools attended an International Geography Youth Summit.“We had to convince the teachers that the children were prepared to take the stage. At the conference, to the surprise and delight of the children, two of their groups got standing ovations from the audience. When they came back, you could see the confidence in them. They came up to the team and their teachers, and thanked them for having given the opportunity,” remembers Khushboo.

Amrutha Krishnan, the project lead at Mantra4Change, who has worked with the school for over 18 months, is a former Teach for India fellow. Having worked on issues like learning abilities with teacher training, she wanted to give “her children” a library. “While we cannot provide them with everything, we can give them books, which have the power to open up whole new worlds,” she says.

 Mantra4Change’s passionate team is determined to make a difference in the lives and education of these children, “Our team is here because they really want to make a change and affect education at the school level,” concludes Santosh.