How Children Found Education Under A Bridge In Kerala

Amidst the lockdown, when the whole of India’s migrant population was left without anything to fend for, a bunch of teachers were making effort to ensure school education would not stop.

But a bunch of teachers created a school out of nothing at all, under the bridge in the coastal state of Kerala. It is sight to see and makes you believe that all is not lost, while the world is still a trying to find a sense of normalcy amidst the corona virus scares.

There is a temporary migrant children’s school in progress under the Bolgatty-Vallarpadam bridge. Children of all age groups can be seen studying there. They are all primarily children of the migrant workers stuck in the city and who have not been able to go back to their home towns amidst the lockdown situations.

The area under the bridge is also home to some labourer families, where teachers from the St John Bosco’s UP School are now running a makeshift school.  Most of these children were going to local schools. But due to lockdown they had no means of making use of online classes. Teachers arranged computers and are helping these children receive education all maintain protocols of hygiene and sanitization.

Teachers include Shamiya Baby, Neema Thomas and Susan Mable—and the school headmistress Elizabeth Fernandez who also give biscuits and face masks to these kids each day, as they embark on a journey of learning amidst tough times for survival.

While technology has tried to bridge the social distancing gaps, there are those children from the underprivileged backgrounds that cannot find means to continue their education in the pandemic times.  There is a lack of infrastructure for them, a problem that cannot be solved unless the government can intervene to provide some kind of support system.