‘Ganesh Utsav’ teaches secularism to slum children

Last updated Sep 12, 2018

Krishna Bhutada

Pune

Playing with mud and clay are kids favourite leisure games, but to enhance children, to cultivate their creativity and their thinking capacity, a Pune based Non-Government Organisation found a innovate way to make children explore in scientific manner in “Fun School.”

Amidst the children living in slum who dream of a luxurious life are usually nervous and are reluctant to be bold and express themselves and their passion for art, only some children gain the confidence to become a successful individual in future. A rummager child equips itself and comes out of the traditional job.

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Absence of acceptance and feeling of triviality has prompted the children to drop out of school, engaging in child labour, gambling and other illegal activities has prompted such incidents . And this realization led to the inception of Gammat Shala, which literally translates to ‘fun school’

Dnyana Devi is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), based in the Pune city. They aim towards development of underprivileged communities and focus on children. They have projects like Gammat Shala, Balsena, Childline and other. They conduct Play activities like Songs, Dance, Theatre, Competitions, Painting, and other modes of arts and crafts.

Anuradha Sahasrabudhe, Director of Dnyan Devi Childline started the concept of “Gammat Shala” Fun school, presently caters to about 60 children on a daily basis. This programme is conducted for children from the urban slums and the rural areas, suffering a triple handicap of social, economic and educational backwardness.

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Anuradha said, “The Gammat Shala is an educational programme of non-formal nature. They primarly target age group of 6 to 14 years. During the Ganpati Festival we teach children to make Ganesh idols from clay instead of POP (plaster of paris) idol. Via this concept we are partly giving knowledge as well as spreading awareness in society.”

She added, “We are doing this concept for last three decades. This really made us help to connect to children and this made all religious children come together. So they organize event every year during Ganesh Festival to teach children about how to celebrate ecofriendly Ganesh festival. As we believe that the approach to community development should not be social work, but social education. This means they do not work for the community, but educate the community towards self-help. Every year many people participate in their events and work with them as a volunteer.”

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Sharing few experiences with NPnews24 she recalls, “Ganapati is a great unifier. We are conducting this activity in Gammat Shala for over 30 years now. Religion and caste was never bothered otherwise our community would have been divided.”

She said, “In past we had a 10-year old girl who belonged to Christian community decided to install the Ganapati she had made. She made her family to become vegetarianian for 10 days and adapt complete cleanliness. Ten years ago, another Muslim boy who kept Panje at his home, also installed and organized Gammat Shala Sarvajanik Ganpati and another Christian community boy did the same. The entire community supported them. They would bathe twice a day before the morning and evening following all Indian rituals. This is what secularism is.”