Navtej Johar’s dream project:

Many years ago, I spent a couple of winter months in Kishankot, a small village close to Amritsar, in Punjab. The days were short and bitterly cold, in the evenings, when the village literally shut down; I would get together with the teenagers of the village and work on devising a play revolving around their adolescent anxieties. During the late afternoons I would help some of the younger children with their homework. In the course of devising the play, the teenage boys spoke of the dysfunctions of their school system. Many of the 10th graders could barely spell their own names and told stories of how the teachers would mostly sit idle, not teach, and routinely send out students to run their personal errands or even tend to their fields. Likewise, I also saw that the home environment of many of these children was not conducive to studying. There was no space for the child at home to keep or arrange her books or have a quiet corner to study. But all the same they were being hounded by the mothers to study. So, there was parental pressure and even interest in the children to study and yet their homes did not provide the orientation required for studying.

At that time, I realised that apart from working towards revamping the dysfunctional school system and finding ways to motivate and monitor the teachers, it was equally important to offer interested children organized space and time to study on their own. And that is when I came upon the idea of the Homework Room Project. If each village would designate one room that is designed and organized as per a student’s requirements, and hire one or two trained teachers to help the children with their studies after school, just like a parent would do at home, it would become possible for first-generation-literate children to cope with the systematic dysfunction and keep up with their studies. And to support such a project an NRI from the same village could be approached for funds. Almost every Punjab village has a few people who’ve migrated to the West, are doing well financially, and are even keen to remain connected to their roots. So, it would be an ideal arrangement, if NRIs could adopt and support the Homework Room Project in their respective villages.

The plan was to have this replicated in several villages and even create a special training centre where educationists, artists, environmentalists etc could come and offer workshops to train Homework Room teachers, equip them with new educational methodologies and most of all sensitise them to the needs of first-generation literate students.

For the Homework Room at Chamaru we are looking for educationists, artists, facilitators and others to volunteer their time to come and work with the teachers and children of the village; and for funds to hire trained teachers plus acquire teaching devices and materials (books, art supplies, educational toys etc.) to make the project effective and sustainable. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to get involved with The Homework Room Project in any capacity. .

Thank you,
Navtej Johar