Doomni: A parish in Assam’s Bongaigaon diocese has teamed up with an NGO to launch a scheme to prevent high school children dropping out of school or flunking in their board examinations.
“In the past two years I am here, I am saddened by the number of promising students who drop out of school just before their first board exams,” Fr Ethelbert Minj, pastor of St Joseph’s Doomni parish, told Matters India at the project launch on May 27.
The parish is nestled in the 1,040-hector Doomni Tea garden in Baksa district. The parish has some 12,000 Catholics spread out in 1,740 families in 27 villages about 10 km radius.
According to Fr Minj, who had served the parish as assistant pastor two decades ago, noted the problem as “acute as large number of students fail or do not appear for the board exams as they are weak in Mathematics, Science or English and cannot afford private tutors.”
At tutor charges 500 rupees (US$7.5) a month for each subject, he explained.
Fr Minj, sought help of Bosco Reach Out (BRO), a Guwahati-based Salesian NGO, to find sponsors for the children to benefit from free coaching.
BRO was established in 1983 as a non-profit, non-political and social service wing of the Salesian Province of Guwahati in northeastern India.
BRO director Salesian Fr K J Thomas proposed to find sponsors for 100 students of t. They belong to Adivasi, Assamese and Boro communities, who live in harmony.
The parish has managed Don Bosco School since 1972 in Assamese medium and in 1997 changed it into an English medium school under Assam Board. The school now has 1,083 students at Doomni and 261 in two feeder schools in Bongaon and Subansiri villages.
While mobilizing students for the coaching class, Fr Minj found “a huge response of some 350 students of the neighboring schools in the parish area who wished to benefit from the scheme.”
Assistant parish priest Fr Charles Deepan Lakra said 235 students have signed up for the two-hour evening classes from Monday to Friday. Four teachers coach them in mathematics, science and English,” coordinator of the Coaching Class project.
The students get daily snacks to ensure that they do not go hungry while staying back to study.
Hearing about the project, Salesians’ Guwahati provincial Fr V.M. Thomas promised every student three notebooks each saying, “It is gift from one of my cousins who was inspired by the ignited minds of village children who were willing to study and dreamed of a better future.”
BRO director Fr Thomas also promised to invite “best three student toppers of the tuition classes” to a Christmas party in December to BRO along with their teachers.
Speaking at the opening function Fr Thomas commended Fr Minj for helping weak students with motivation and conviction.
He quoted Mahatma Gandhi to assert that “our talents lie in the villages and given the chance they will bloom.”
The NGO director encouraged the students saying, “When other students loaf about, there should be no drop outs and no failures from coaching class students.”
Fr Thomas congratulated Anil Kujur from Doomni Tea Garden, who has become the first college lecturer at Doomni College and PhD Scholar at Assam Don Bosco University Guwahati.
Damien Kerketta, a ninth grader, on behalf of his classmates, thanked the priests and NGO for “thinking about us poor and marginalized students offering us opportunity to succeed in life.”