N.Senthil Kumar is a practising advocate in Madurai District Court. But he spends more time outside the court. “I am always arguing and fighting for children’s right to education outside the court room,” he smiles.
The soft-spoken advocate likes to be surrounded by his little friends whom he has given shelter in “The Humanist Home for Children (HHC)” for the past seven years. There are 21 boys and 19 girls aged between four and 14 years who lead a life of dignity. Earlier they would loiter on the streets, work in the fields or simply waste time. Now, they attend classes and dream big.
It always disturbs me to see children working or wasting time when they ought to be in studying in school,” says Senthil. An accidental trip in 2003 to a Home for the mentally challenged children run by his friend in Thondi changed Senthil’s outlook to life forever.
“After returning I just could not get over the happy faces of the children I met,” he says. It motivated him to start a similar Home in Madurai. But when he went scouting for a place to house children with disabilities, he found it difficult to find one as no house owner was keen to let the house to mentally challenged kids.
That was also the time when the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan was operational across the country. Often Senthil would remember his school days in his native village Salvarpatti. His parents were poor and he would daily walk seven km. to the nearest Government school in Chatrapatti. “There were many other children from my village and other places on the way who were irregular and eventually dropped out. I have always seen the poor villagers suffer”, he says.
It was this feeling towards his fellow beings that gave Senthil the idea years later to set up a Home for school dropouts. In 2006, he founded the Peoples’ Foundation and two years later started bringing his village children who stop going to school.
There are always too many instabilities in a family, he says, from financial constraints to parents with drug or alcohol issues, or severe health and other issues in the family that children feel they have to work to help their parents. In the schools the child either struggles socially or falls so far behind in the class that he or she wants to give up. With the girls it is also the issue of safety and sanitation, he adds.
Senthil Kumar took a proactive approach to his village’s dropout problem. He went door-to-door convincing both the parents and the children about the importance of returning to school.
“I would use up all my free time tracking the students. It gave me a deeper insight into what they have to deal with at home,” he says. It took Senthil a few months to get the first two kids. “I found an eight-year-old girl taking care of her four siblings, the last one being five months old. Her father left home when he found that the fifth girl child was on her way and her mother died during the childbirth. Her aged grandmother was left to fend for the five sisters,” he recalls.
Moved by their condition, Senthil brought the two elder girls with him. Today one is in class XII and the other in class X, raring to take on the world. “Both of them are bright and are attending mainstream school on scholarship,” he informs.
Senthil started HHC with 14 kids, two teachers, a helper and a cook. The children study till class VIII at the orphanage and later depending on their aptitude go to high school or any diploma course. Once they move out to hostels or return to their homes, Senthil remains in touch and continues to support them with books, uniforms or fees as the case may be. So far, he has helped over 200 school dropouts finish class VIII from HHC.
This is the seventh year of his dropout prevention blitz and he is far from getting over his teething problems. Senthil Kumar dreams of his own building for running the orphanage. He shares a little secret. An elderly gentleman in the neighbourhood was so impressed with his work and dedication that he gave his daughter in marriage to him. “Otherwise many people must be thinking I am crazy spending my entire earnings on the Home,” he says.
His financial condition has been so tight that he has also been forced to pawn his wife’s jewellery. But that does not seem to bother the young couple. They are happy upgrading the lives of children.
“Barring one or two, I have not encountered a kid who does not want to go to school, says Senthil Kumar. “It is not that the children without opportunities do not care about their future,” he says, “it is just that they do not have a vision and therefore, require guidance and some help.”
“I am trying to be that help,” he adds.
(Making a difference is a fortnightly column about ordinary people and events that leave an extraordinary impact on us. E-mail soma.basu@thehindu.co.in to tell her about someone you know who is making a difference)
