Had the privilege to be in Little Angels school in Pune during the
open day
It was nice to see the parents trickling in one by one, meeting the
staff, and being handed over their kid’s progress report for the semester.
I had a glance at some of the answer sheets while a parent was going
through it.
A good and simple way of testing children having ADD and ADHD.
I found Mr Jehangir, (the founder of Little Angels) greeting every parent
and chatting with them.
At the venue, there was an exhibition cum sale of the items made by
these children (organized by “Kalanidhi”)
Most of the items were pertaining to Diwali, as the festive season
was round the corner.
Some of the kids were keenly inspecting the exhibited items
while others preferred to try out their regular activity in school,
or pose for me.
While the parents were busy, I engaged Mr Jehangir in a conversation,
asking him how he came up with the idea of opening a school like this. He said
that he was a flight purser in Gulf air and was also helping his father in
running their eatery in Colaba.
Once he happened to visit an exhibition run by Dilkush, a school for
mentally challenged children. Very soon he found himself getting enrolled for a
training program for teaching special kids. A male special educator was unheard
of in those days. It was a tough battle for him at every step.
After completing the course he approached the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.
Maybe his grit and determination helped him in procuring some land from BMC at Bandra
and that is how the first school of Little Angels came up in 2004.
He said his biggest challenge was to convince the parents that these
children need to go to a special school where they are given vocational
training.
Most of the parents are just worried about their children getting “proper
education”
According to Jehangir “These
are children who have normal and sometimes very high IQ, but who have to be taught
differently. They can read, write and some can do very complex mathematics”
I was suddenly reminded of Dustin Hoffman’s role in the 1988 movie “Rainman”.
picture source : internet
Coming back to the exhibition, one of the items on display was this
oil free pickle and I picked it up immediately as I recollected reading about
consuming oil free food for good health. The bottle could not have come at a
better time
