Following Nelson Mandela’s teaching Sehar Bajwa uses education as a tool to eliminate gender inequality to create a sustainable planet. Sehar, a class 12 student of The Shri Ram School, Moulsari, Gurgaon started ‘Anmol Shiksha’ for rural children between the ages of 14-17 in village Bahadurgarh, Dera Bassi near Chandigarh to empower them by providing essential entrepreneurship skills.
She states, “The aim is to bridge the gap between the bookish knowledge children have and the job skills they need for earning their livelihood when they grow up.”
Sehar Bajwa with children from her school
Anmol Shiksha functions as an after-school and classes are held three days a week, two hours a day. “Ours is an after school, disruptive and scalable learning platform targeted at uplifting rural education. The goal is to help children quickly evolve into level-headed individuals capable of making informed decisions and taking on all challenges of life to shape themselves into job creators rather than job seekers,” shares Sehar.
She continues, “There is no division between girls and boys so far as learning is concerned. I don’t want gender stereotypes to creep in this initiative. The school was opened in November last year with 20 children, and today there are 64 students who attend the school after their regular school hours to learn things apart from and in addition to what they learn in their academic curriculum. Students are taken in irrespective of their socio-cultural or economic background.”
She informs that the curriculum is based on four core vectors: moral values, leadership skills, STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) simplification and entrepreneurship development, all of which is taught via hands-on learning through practical experiments, role-play and creative thinking methodologies. “All these values and skills are linked to what the children are learning in their regular schools, which not only keep the interest of children alive but also make learning wholesome,” explains Sehar.
Her teachers and father helped her finalise the curriculum. “Our education system doesn’t focus on skill development, my father being a businessman knows what sort of skills are required for turning into an employable person, so he helped me with that aspect. My teachers helped me make learning effective so that they not only gain skills but turn into job providers rather than job seekers,” she adds.
