Consul general of China in Kolkata Xu Wei recently visited the remote village of Ballavpur in Birbhum to promote and support people-to-people connect and encourage children to study. He also visited the facilities where the children are classed for skill development.

Ballavpur, a tribal village near Kopai station, Bolpur in Birbhum district is mostly inhabited by people from the Santhal tribe, who are socio-economically impoverished. Education and public health scenario in this village is not very encouraging as there is a dearth of good health centres and schools.

After Covid, Be and Make, an NGO working for the impoverished sections in this part of the state, found a huge learning gap among primary level students ranging from 6-12 years age group.

To bridge this gap, the organization started a community-based foundational literacy project, Sopan (one teacher one school model) that aims to strengthen English, Bengali and mathematical skills of the children so that they can well achieve functional literacy level.

Presently, 35 children are getting education through regular classes from Monday to Friday. To address their holistic developmental needs – elocution, dance, drawing, yoga, sports and drama classes, are being conducted on Saturdays.

All the children are also registered in government schools too. They get mid-day meals and financial scheme benefits from government schools. Since there is no assessment, children lag in academic development.

After attending Sopan for the last two years, children are performing much better in annual exams.

Be and Make now aims to introduce online spoken English classes for these children along with computer literacy, crucial to adopt for this budding generation.

The organisation also looks forward to address menstrual health and hygiene of the adolescent tribal girls in the remote villages.

The consul general said, “My visit here reminded me of my childhood days as much of the countryside and conditions of life are similar to where I grew up.
I am very happy that our small gifts and donations could bring a lot of happiness in the faces of beautiful village children. And such programmes will only help build a friendly relationship between the two great nations of China and India ”

Samrat Chowdhury, chief mentor, Baul Foundation, said, “I tried to facilitate the visit of Mr Xu Wei to strengthen people to people bonding and contribute to social empowerment and self-belief in these children.”