Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday kick-started the “Desh ke Mentor” programme launched in the national capital to ensure that children get proper guidance and support to become confident and productive individuals when they grow up. The pilot project started for this purpose has shown encouraging results, he pointed out.

Kejriwal said children needed basically two kinds of support when in their teens and in classes between nine and 10.

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They require emotional support so that they do not have depressive thoughts because of various kinds of pressures. The second major support they require is in the form of a value system and what they can do in their life or what options are available to them.

“Here comes the role of mentors. In some cases, we have an elder brother or sister who serves as a mentor for his/her younger brothers or sisters. We are looking for such people who can play the role of a mentor for school children. You can be anywhere in the country, but you can serve as a mentor. Anyone wishing to play such a role can adopt at least one child to serve as his or her mentor. You don’t have to come to Delhi. You can play this role through an app we have developed,” the Chief Minister suggested.

He said this was a major nation-building task. This is how the country can have mentally healthy, confident, productive and patriotic nationals.

“If you put one brick on the nation-building wall you have made a major contribution to the task of nation-building. After all, nations are made of human beings, not of bricks and mortars”, he pointed out.

Kejriwal informed that unusual things are taking place in the field of education in Delhi. “The government schools in the national capital are doing so well that 2,70,000 students from private schools this year shifted to government schools. This was never heard of earlier. Previously, there used to be 16,00,000 students in government schools, but now their number has gone up to 18,70,000,” he said and congratulated teachers, parents and others for this achievement.

He said Delhi’s happiness and entrepreneurial classes were also being appreciated by one and all. “When former US President Donald Trump came to India, his wife saw how the happiness class was being conducted. She was immensely impressed by the happiness curriculum introduced in Delhi’s schools,” the Chief Minister added.