There is a faint breeze of hope

We have been supporting Jeevan Daan Samiti since 2002. Vishvesh Bhai who heads JDS came to the Kaithi meeting and told us how he would start in the morning, bicycle from village to village teaching children.
Today JDS runs 6 non-formal education centers in Ghazipur district. Each center has an enrollment of about 30-35 children per year. All these children belong to an community known as Mushars (Rat-eating). In the hierarchy of castes, these people fall in the outer most section. Even the dalits consider them untouchable.
For the past couple of years, the samiti has been actively encouraging parents to get their children enrolled in the primary schools, whether private or government. It has been an uphill task and continues to be one for the teachers do not like to have these children enrolled into their school. But the organization and the parents have persisted. There has been an increase in enrollment.
For the past couple of years, we have also realized that teaching alphabets is meaningless. Yes, the child can read but where is the reading material? So we sponsored libraries in almost all of our project. Each library has 500 books. Children can either read them at the center or take them home to read.
And all this adds up. Finally.
This year when I asked the children to read a book, they read confidently. They could add, subtract, and do basic math.
The story was repeated in other projects too.
But the most heartening scene was that of uniform-clad children walking to the school in the morning.
For the first time, since 2007, I felt there was a faint breeze of hope.