Members of Mumbai’s Dawoodi Bohra community who visited schools in the Mokhada taluka of Palghar district last week to distribute notebooks returned back with gifts of trees from the mostly tribal students.
As part of their Independence Day programme, the Dawoodi Bohras distributed 12,500 notebooks to around 2000 students in 27 schools, many of them run by the Zilla Parishad or the district administration. The programme was organised by the Dawoodi Bohra community’s philanthropic arm Project Rise and the Diganta Swaraj Foundation, a group working in Mokhada, to provide essential educational resources to less fortunate students and foster hope and ambition among the youth in the region.
Mustafa Khorakiwala, an alumni from the Dawoodi Bohra school, MSB Education Institute, who was a member of the team that visited the schools, said that the children received text books from the government but could not afford to buy notebooks. “The children need at least 50,000 notebooks and providing them with the books will be part of our ongoing project. They also asked us for computers,” said Khorakiwala, an accountant and tax consultant.
The area faces challenges like high rates of malnutrition, poverty and low literacy rates. Shraddha Shringarpur of Diganta Swaraj Foundation, said that during their ten years of work in the largely tribal talukas of Mokhada, Jawhar, and Dahanu, they have seen an improvement in learning levels and enrollment. “Teachers have said that one reason for the improvement in learning levels was the availability of notebooks. Earlier, parents did not buy notebooks and the teachers were not giving the children homework because they had no books to write on. With the availability of notebooks teachers are giving writing assignments to be done at home. Students also use the books to practice art and painting,” said Shraddha.
The programme began with Poshera High School and the Zilla Parishad school at Nirgudwadi and Vakarichapada. The highlight of the programme was the extraordinary exchange that took place between the visitors from Mumbai and the students. The students gifted trees to MSB alumni who have planted them in their school compound. “We gave what we had (the books) and they gave us what they have in abundance – trees,” said Khorakiwala.
