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Beena Sheth Lashkari is designing continuous, rapid innovations to provide slum children their first exposure to education and to help them stay in school. From doorstep schools to schools-on-wheels to evening schools, Beena finds creative ways to make that first approach successful
 Poor children in urban areas face differing challenges in gaining access to basic education. Coming from a variety of caste, regional and social backgrounds, they are often 'invisible' to education authorities. Some poor kids, like children of street-dwellers, and young girls barred from school for social and economic reasons, are more invisible than others. Enrolment alone does not solve the problem of securing primary education for these children. Nearly one of every two students drops out of school without completing even the first five years. Educators feel that while building infrastructure like more state-run schools, more relevant curricula and better teachers is essential, we must start educating more poor children right now, using the best tools available at present.
Beena Sheth Lashkari is committed to finding new ways of providing this first educational experience for poor urban children. Beena's goal is to have "every child in school, and each child learning" long enough to become literate and to earn the 5+ level certificate, which makes a huge difference when looking for employment. She has a series of easy-access tools to make this possible. Beena's alternative Doorstep Schools are for children in Bombay slum communities who are out of school. The school-on-wheels, a classroom in a bus, helps her reach entire communities of children outside the system: street kids, children of poor construction workers, seasonal migrants, and other representatives of the unorganised sectors with no permanent address.
The bus parks in a regular slot every day while the staff caters to the schooling needs of local children. If there is a municipal school nearby, they help children enroll in it. Alternatively, social workers look for a site where permanent arrangements can be made for a Doorstep School in the area, sometimes in an existing balwadi or in a space donated by a kind resident. After setting up the school, the bus moves on to a new area. Doorstep School has also created 'parallel' schools for drop-outs, like adolescent girls who unload fish in the Bombay docks during the day, whose needs remain unmet. They attend evening classes taught in each lane of the slums between 7 and 9 p.m. Once a Doorstep School 'graduate' is enrolled in a government-funded school, the organisation follows up and conducts study classes to guide the children through the formal school system.
There is also a library programme for which corporations and individuals donate books to government schools' sparse libraries. The Doorstep School staff read with the children in the schools and also bring books to slum children as a door-to-door library. As a major policy change, Beena has secured permission from the government for children in parallel programmes to sit for the government mid-level certificate examination.
Brought up in a traditional business family, Beena chose a different path into the areas of children's rights, education, and health. She studied child psychology in her college and worked directly in child health at Bombay's Nair hospital as part of her Master's degree in social work. This practical interdisciplinary grounding helped her to see 'invisible' children who had been overlooked by the system. In 1988 Beena set up her first Doorstep School for the children of nomadic construction workers in one slum of South Mumbai. Doorstep Schools now run in 17 centres in South Mumbai, ward A & B. The school-on-wheels runs in Mumbai and Pune.
Beena is a Fellow of Ashoka Innovators for the Public, a global non-profit organisation set up in 1981 to build an association of social entrepreneurs who will undertake socially productive and innovative work in health, education, human rights, civic participation, environment and economic development (www.ashokaind.org/ www.ashoka.org).
To know more about doorstep schools and Beena Sheth Lashkari visit www.doorstepschool.org
(InfoChange News & Features, September 2002)
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