Par Nelly Sallibartan (Collège Germaine Tillion (91)) le 02 mars 2010, 12:46 - Enquiries
As the holiday is coming to its end soon, you may not feel like coming back to school. Yet some children over the world would very much like to be in your place and fight to get some education.
Read this article from the BBC and watch the video you'll understand their hunger.
Around the world millions of children are not getting a proper
education because their families are too poor to afford to send them to
school.
In India, one schoolboy is trying to change that.
In the first
report in the BBC's Hunger to Learn series, Damian Grammaticas meets
Babar Ali, whose remarkable education project is transforming the lives
of hundreds of poor children.
At 16 years old, Babar Ali must
be the youngest headmaster in the world. He's a teenager who is in
charge of teaching hundreds of students in his family's backyard, where
he runs classes for poor children from his village.
The story
of this young man from Murshidabad in West Bengal is a remarkable tale
of the desire to learn.
Babar Ali's day starts early. He wakes, pitches in with the
household chores, then jumps on an auto-rickshaw which takes him part
of the 10km (six mile) ride to the Raj Govinda school. The last couple
of kilometres he has to walk.
The school is the best in this
part of West Bengal. There are hundreds of students, boys and girls.
The classrooms are neat, if bare. But there are desks, chairs, a
blackboard, and the teachers are all dedicated and well-qualified.
As
the class 12 roll-call is taken, Babar Ali is seated in the middle in
the front row. He's a tall, slim, gangly teenager, studious and smart
in his blue and white uniform. He takes his notes carefully. He is the
model student.
Babar Ali is the first member of his family ever to get a proper education.
"It's not easy for me to come to school because I live so far away,"
he says, "but the teachers are good and I love learning. And my parents
believe I must get the best education possible that's why I am here."
Raj
Govinda school is government-run so it is free, all Babar Ali has to
pay for is his uniform, his books and the rickshaw ride to get there.
But still that means his family has to find around 1,800 rupees a year
($40, £25) to send him to school. In this part of West Bengal that is a
lot of money. Many poor families simply can't afford to send their
children to school, even when it is free.
Chumki Hajra is one
who has never been to school. She is 14 years old and lives in a tiny
shack with her grandmother. Their home is simple A-frame supporting a
thatched roof next to the rice paddies and coconut palms at the edge of
the village. Inside the hut there is just room for a bed and a few
possessions.
Every morning, instead of going to school, she scrubs the dishes and
cleans the homes of her neighbours. She's done this ever since she was
five. For her work she earns just 200 rupees a month ($5, £3). It's not
much, but it's money her family desperately needs. And it means that
she has to work as a servant everyday in the village.
"My
father is handicapped and can't work," Chumki tells me as she scrubs a
pot. "We need the money. If I don't work, we can't survive as a family.
So I have no choice but to do this job."
You can listen to more from her here
Chumki is now
getting an education, thanks to Babar Ali. The 16-year-old has made it
his mission to help Chumki and hundreds of other poor children in his
village. The minute his lessons are over at Raj Govinda school, Babar
Ali doesn't stop to play, he heads off to share what he's learnt with
other children from his village.
At four o'clock every
afternoon after Babar Ali gets back to his family home a bell summons
children to his house. They flood through the gate into the yard behind
his house, where Babar Ali now acts as headmaster of his own,
unofficial school.
Lined up in his back yard the children sing
the national anthem. Standing on a podium, Babar Ali lectures them
about discipline, then study begins.
Babar Ali gives lessons
just the way he has heard them from his teachers. Some children are
seated in the mud, others on rickety benches under a rough, homemade
shelter. The family chickens scratch around nearby. In every corner of
the yard are groups of children studying hard.
Babar Ali was
just nine when he began teaching a few friends as a game. They were all
eager to know what he learnt in school every morning and he liked
playing at being their teacher.
Now his afternoon school has 800 students, all from poor families,
all taught for free. Most of the girls come here after working, like
Chumki, as domestic helps in the village, and the boys after they have
finished their day's work labouring in the fields.
"In the
beginning I was just play-acting, teaching my friends," Babar Ali says,
"but then I realised these children will never learn to read and write
if they don't have proper lessons. It's my duty to educate them, to
help our country build a better future."
Including Babar Ali
there are now 10 teachers at the school, all, like him are students at
school or college, who give their time voluntarily. Babar Ali doesn't
charge for anything, even books and food are given free, funded by
donations. It means even the poorest can come here.
"Our area
is economically deprived," he says. "Without this school many kids
wouldn't get an education, they'd never even be literate."
Seated on a rough bench squeezed in with about a dozen other girls, Chumki Hajra is busy scribbling notes.
Her
dedication to learning is incredible to see. Every day she works in
homes in the village from six in the morning until half past two in the
afternoon, then she heads to Babar Ali's school. At seven every evening
she heads back to do more cleaning work.
Chumki's dream is to one day become a nurse, and Babar Ali's classes might just make it possible.
The
school has been recognised by the local authorities, it has helped
increase literacy rates in the area, and Babar Ali has won awards for
his work.
The youngest children are just four or five, and they
are all squeezed in to a tiny veranda. There are just a couple of bare
electric bulbs to give light as lessons stretch into the evening, and
only if there is electricity.
And then the monsoon rain begins.
Huge drops fall as the children scurry for cover, slipping in the mud.
They crowd under a piece of plastic sheeting. Babar Ali shouts an
order. Lessons are cancelled for the afternoon otherwise everyone will
be soaked. Having no classrooms means lessons are at the mercy of the
elements.
The children climb onto the porch of a nearby shop as
the rain pours down. Then they hurry home through the downpour.
Tomorrow they'll be back though. Eight hundred poor children, unable to
afford an education, but hungry for anything they can learn at Babar
Ali's school.
You can read some kids comments on this page and send me yours
Hoping you'll come back hungry to learn too. NS
Dinosaurs were wiped out by a giant asteroid the size of the Isle of Wight, a group of experts have concluded.
Alice meets weird and wonderful characters such as a rabbit in a waistcoat, a mad Hatter and a blue caterpillar! 
In Egypt experts have discovered a very very old stone head. 
