I wish more of Kamal Parmars. Please read this inspiring story.
Thanks to Zest caste egroup for where I got this email.
If someone can trace him and get the contacts, we may consider to help this
great man in a small way.
With regards
Benjamin
This 'Santa Claus' nurtures young Dalit minds
Posted by: Siddhartha Kumar mailsiddharth...@gmail.com tellsiddhartha
Wed Jul 15, 2009 7:36 am (PDT)
http://timesofindia .indiatimes. com/NEWS- City-Ahmedabad- This-Santa-
Claus-nurtures- young-Dalit- minds/articlesho w/4773980. cms
This 'Santa Claus' nurtures young Dalit minds
| tnn15 July 2009, 01:10am IST
Ahmedabad : He is nicknamed 'Santa Claus' in the Dalit neighbourhood
of Bhudarpura in Amabawadi area. Every evening, 150 children for the
last 13 years keep their 5.30pm appointment with Kamal Parmar,62, as
if he were the Pied Piper. All of them queue up first to prove to
'Kamalsaab' that they have learned their tables well - at lightning
speed.
Children love studying, playing, and most of all knowing about their
country, being part of a democracy and what is it like being an
Indian. For all these years, despite suffering losses in his welding
business, Kamal has invested most of his energy in teaching children
belonging to municipal schools - who are generally prejudiced to be
weak in studies. He is also a defining example for even the education
department in his innovative and practical methods of teaching.
Once, I stopped a group of children coming out of a nearby municipal
school who had taken their exams to ask about their exam. They claimed
they have all scored a hundred. I quizzed them only to know that they
had copied their question paper. I stopped everything that day and
realised it was vocation. Not everyone gets such opportunity. I called
them the next day and held a class, said Kamal.
Though Kamal is just a seventh grader himself, his fundamentals are
strong. A principal feature of his class is that it is interactive.
Bhavini Chavda, 17, said, I came to this class when I was six and
have not missed a single day. I have learnt the essence of sharing
knowledge, to be compassionate with those who are weak and to be a
self- reliant citizen.
Most of my former students who are in college or in 10th standards
come every day to teach the younger ones. Majority of these children
have parents who are drunk or do not bother about their kids, he
added. Half way through the class, he treats kids to bhakri, dal and
chana dal curry, which he cooks. Donors also sponsor the day's food
sometimes. Even the menu for the day is written in English and some
students talk to each other in English.
--
An educated man without character and humility was more dangerous than a beast.
If his education was detrimental to the welfare of poor, he was a curse to
society.
-Babasaheb Dr B R Ambedkar
Please visit www.friendsforeducation.org or www.ambedkarscholarship.org
