Mumtaz Alam, IndiaTomorrow.net,
New Delhi, Oct 25: This young Mass Communication graduate has frequented this slum in South Delhi for several months to enlighten the dwellers about the importance of education. She wanted that the future of slum children does not become dark like she had feared about her own when she was a school-going child and her father had suddenly passed away.
After weeks and months of efforts, Sana Khan was able to convince them to send their children to school but as there was none in the slum called Shram Vihar on the Delhi-Noida border, she set up a school in a make-shift structure there. With three women teachers, including herself, she has been teaching about 150 children – their fathers are either jobless and addicted or menial laborers and mothers work in flats in nearby posh colonies to keep the kitchen afire.
The locality is a classic example of two socio-economic extremes in India. On one side of the Delhi-Noida Highway is Jasola – one of the posh residential colonies of the National Capital with good schools, a mall, shopping complex, half a dozen banks and as many ATMs in just one kilometer radius. Across the road is the slum on the bank of 30-feet wide open drain, no pucca road and no school.
When she left journalism to work for slum children
After doing graduation in Mass Communication from the state-run South Delhi Polytechnic for Women in 2010, Sana worked at some TV news channels including Sahara Samay but for short stint because she wanted to do something else – something for the children who are facing the threat of a black future thanks to absence of education.
“I wanted to do something for underprivileged children. After the death of my father when I was young, I passed through a situation when I was about to end my education midway. I tried for scholarship but got none. Then a noble person came up and helped me and I continued my education,” recalls Sana and gets emotional.
Sana Khan (c) distributing Diwali gifts among slum dwellers in Delhi.
“After completing my education I didn’t want that whatever happened with me is repeated with these children. I got a person who helped me but I don’t know whether these children would get one who could save their future. If they didn’t their future could be worse given the bad and deteriorating environment. That’s why I wanted to give them right education,” says Sana, mother of two kids.
Much before opening the school, she would teach poor children at her home in Jamia Nagar and also help their families.
“Children from Batla House and Shaheen Bagh areas whose mothers used to work as domestic help would come to me for study. I used to distribute rations also among them.”
Besides education, she held self-defence classes for girls and ladies. She also taught driving to some girls and helped them get job in Ola and Uber cabs companies. Sana helped many widows in getting pension from government. She taught some girls sewing and fashion designing.
Fashion Designing Centre to be opened by Rahat Welfare Foundation in Shaheen Bagh, New Delhi
Some years back, she decided to do all these things in a formal way and set up an NGO by the name of Rahat Welfare Foundation and got it registered with the Delhi government.
She says she has not got any aid from the government and has been doing all these out of her own pocket and donations of some individuals.
In January this year, she started the school in make-shift structure in the slum but earnestly needs a pucca house as winter is approaching and it will be almost difficult to run the classes in this structure.
From 1st of the coming November, she is opening a training centre for widows – where they would be taught sewing and fashion designing free of cost.
For successful running of both the school and the training centre, Sana needs support.
Note: Sana Khan can be contacted at [email protected] .
