My background...

I entered the teaching profession as a primary school teacher, teaching English at Nirmala Convent School, Nasik, Maharashtra. The principal of that school insisted that I should pursue a bachelor’s degree in education. She foresaw that in the future a formal degree would be required if I wanted to continue teaching. After I got married, I moved to Hyderabad where I took up another job at a church school. By now I had developed a passion for teaching. I later got a job in a school which was in a rural area and many of the children attending that school were the first ones in their families to go to school. The satisfaction I got in being able to make a difference in their lives was immense. After 4 years, I moved to Jamaica and worked in a store for some time. There I was able to hone my language skills – learn different dialects interacting with people from different cultures. Then I moved to Lagos where I taught at a school for 7 years and later served as the vice principal for another 5 years. Then I moved back to Hyderabad where I got the opportunity to open a brand-new school and build it up from scratch. It was a Sadhu Vaswani mission school. The school opened with 30 students and grew to 3000+ in 9 years.

Now, I serve as the correspondent at the Hippocampus School Rangapur. Teaching is still my first love. Whenever I get the opportunity, I do that.

My Aikyam experience...

This is a rural school, and the challenges are immense. Nevertheless, the children are creative, have great ideas and are enthusiastic about contributing. The Aikyam facilitators handpicked the children that participated, ones that could cope with the requirements. Although their language skills are not as well developed, I was amazed at how the children took to the program. They went into their communities and spoke to the residents to explain the problems they were working on. They are looking forward to continuing with the project to implement the solutions they have come up with, on their own.