Boarding Schools for Homeless Kids

Education is beyond textbooks. Education gives us knowledge of the world around us, providing us with a new perspective and outlook. It helps us build opinions and point of views about different things in life. But the reality is that there are still many children in India who do not even get basic education.

It is necessary to provide free education to children in a country like India, where poverty-stricken families have neither the money nor the means to give their children quality education, so they send their kids to work as labourers to bring some cash in the household instead. Free education will give these kids the opportunity to go to school to make something of themselves.

There are a lot of children in India who are abandoned by their parents at a very young age because they are too poor to provide for them. As a result, these children grow up in foster homes or in places which do not take care of their all round development. Not only that, the number of nomads wandering around in our country is not less. Among them, we can see children from babies to fourteen and fifteen years old. It is essential to get quality education and skill development training for these homeless orphans who are wandering around like this. That way, those children can grow up to be independent and productive. But is it enough to provide only compulsory subject training to these homeless children? Not enough. They must have a pleasant environment to learn. Children who don’t own even a closed house on the street do not have a situation to study after school. It is essential to ensure shelter, nutrition and proper health care facilities for such children.

Often abandoning their dreams of education, they wander the streets and help their families pick up trash. The inability to get an education and improve their circumstances ensures that children living in India’s slums will repeat the cycle of poverty that plagued their parents.

There’s a general belief that children generally do better in family settings than in institutional ones, but when the family or neighbourhood settings have become so toxic or not suited for the growth of children that it puts them at risk, a boarding school sure beats the atmosphere these homeless kids live in. Unstable living situations can jeopardise any child’s ability to learn. Stable housing and safe neighbourhoods, in other words, matter as much as good teaching and supportive schools in the education of the kids. Realising these issues, our Delhi government has taken a welcome step this time.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia revealed in his budget speech this year that the three ministries of the Delhi government will work together to set up a boarding school for the children of homeless families living on footpaths, flyovers, staircases or open places of worship, pavilions and railway platforms, who are denied education in this way and have allocated Rs 10 crore for it.

In fact, it is very good that the government is implementing such a scheme. Because in this way, children wandering around the streets can be prevented from begging and becoming criminals. Moreover, the number of such beggars will also decrease significantly in the future.

There are three types of street children. Those who run away from their families and live alone on the streets, who spend most of their time fending for themselves on the streets and regularly come home, Children from street families living on the streets with their families. In this way, the children who grow up on the streets will not get much education and will have low social values. Along with good studies, such children can develop their character and become disciplined by staying and studying in a boarding school. Through this, these children will receive emotional and psychological care as well as timely nutrition. And they can bring out their other talents and shine in that field.

Boarding schools will provide shelter and home to the homeless kids which in itself is an achievement restricting them to fall into the vicious cycle of begging and other problems and crimes, and they will prove much helpful in a child’s overall development. The benefits of studying in such schools are; to inculcate a students confidence, encourage self-reliability, provide equal living standards, promote better learning, teach social values, conducive learning environment, connections with the like minded, preparing students for life. It is not only the law that makes free and compulsory education a fundamental right of a child, it is also the responsibility of the government to ensure it for the child. Not only because of providing education to homeless children, education should also benefit the child in the right way. For that, it is necessary to include such children in boarding schools.