This initiative was started by a high school student, Ameek Singh, with a mission of “Teaching Kids through Kids”.
School Kids in MCD School benefitting from free tutoring program in New Delhi, IndiaThis is about educating kids in US and India and helping the community. We know about the US education system and the idea of helping kids beyond school brought this idea to fruition. The project was initiated here by helping students that asked for help randomly. However, after the death and funeral of Ameek’s grandma, he went to India as she was there during her last days. She had a strong passion for education. Ameek decided to try the idea there. He asked Sahaita a non profit organization for help and Kids tutoring free was born,
In US, we are expanding kids tutoring free in a more organized way to local schools by providing students with stipends and scholarships and requesting our scholars to help younger kids. The goal is to encourage kids help other kids which can help develop more responsibility and community service and cohesiveness in kids. The paragraph here defines how this project worked in India.
MCD School, New Delhi, India
In India, a much larger reliance exists on after school tutoring and success in the classroom is impossible without after school tutoring. Most successful kids in India attend after school tutoring. However, there are a large number of kids who cannot afford tutoring and are unable to achieve their potential grades.
As a summer project, Ameek visited schools in India to identify needy but brilliant juniors in high schools. These identified scholars are given stipends to enable them to afford tutoring for themselves. In return, these scholars tutor needy freshmen students for free on the condition that current freshman will tutor once they become juniors. This creates a never-ending program of kids teaching kids for free.
Ameek came up with the idea after volunteering at the Homework Express Program at my local library, in which he helped children of all ages with their homework.
As an example, one of the selected scholars, Aakash, is a high school student from DAV Public School, New Delhi, India. Aakash’s mother died and his new stepmother refused to take care of him and his brother. He earns and pays for his own and younger brother’s schooling. In fact, Aakash’s parents won’t even pay for him to take a bus to school so he walks forty five minutes to school each day. Despite all adversity, he has been an academic topper for the last five years.
Another selected scholar, Poornima, is a high school junior and a CBSE school topper. She is a winner of 2 consecutive National CBSE Expression Series from Delhi state. An artist, with a number of intra school and interschool trophies on her name. She is the eldest daughter of a peon with two siblings.
This project is easily expandable to cities outside Delhi because it requires minimal infrastructure to set up and once implemented, it has a never ending stream of participants. From the US, Ameek skypes with tutors periodically just to make sure the program is running smoothly.