Some Hope from Hope School.

Last year I took a vacation to train twenty Room to Read affiliated teachers in Delhi – all incredible teachers with a passion for education and helping out those most in need, as they once were. These teachers work for various NGO’s in the Delhi slums (where 1/3 of the population lives) and Room to Read supplies them with libraries, computer labs, professional development, etc. It’s an excellent model - the NGOs have the relationships in the community while Room to Read, headquartered in San Francisco, has built relationships with various local publishers and lots of rich people back in the states (their Executive Director, John Wood, is a brilliant fund-raiser and his recently published book is a good read – Leaving Microsoft to Change the World).

We all know that volunteering can be hit or miss for both parties – do our skills map to the organizations needs? Are we giving anything of value? Is the value we provide sustainable? Surprisingly, after just 3 days of training these teachers and 3 more days of visiting their various NGOs, my answer was a resounding yes. And its not because of me, its because of these teachers and their exponential multiplier effect. Their hunger for knowledge, desire to make an impact on their thousands of students, lack of resources (which motivates them to squeeze every last drop of value out of their teaching tools) and “just make it happen” focus creates change.

This year we held our training at the Hope School. Hope School was founded 27 years ago to provide education to those girls who were not permitted to go to school for various reasons – (1) they needed to beg, (2) they needed to work, (3) they needed to raise their siblings, or (4) their parents didn’t believe girls should be educated. So Hope School provides a unique curriculum around their working hours, a day care for their younger siblings, and social workers who regularly (at least once a month according to the Executive Director) visit parents to educate them on the value of education and make sure their children stay in school.

I was greeted during my first day of training this year with a presentation from last year’s teachers on how their skills impacted students throughout the year. One of my favorite stories was from a primary teacher, Nishent, at the Hope School who used Kid Pix with street children who were not allowed to enroll at Hope (their parents, if they had any, would still not allow them to attend school). She introduced computers to the children by using Kid Pix software, apparently the students returned day after day to play for hours with Kid Pix. One year later, eight of the street children are now enrolled full-time at Hope School – after the parents saw their work on the computers they enrolled them hoping this was a chance for better opportunity.

Each morning on the way to training, the Hope School story gives me my own hope as I walk with my entourage of uneducated street children. My free pens and rupees can’t change their lives, but the teachers I work with can and do.