Online edition of Sunday Observer

For children, bridging the chasm of disparity is as easy as A, B, C Overseas School of Colombo shows the way through 'Helping Hands' a novel programme

History is speckled with ideologies preaching many arduous methodologies of how to bridge the chasm of disparity. Between the ones "who have" and the ones who "do not have". Between the ones who are "enabled" by access to advantages and the ones who are "denied". Yet, at the end of each day, despite the well-worn platitudes, the divide seems to be wider than ever.

Recently, there was a get-together that truly put to shame the inept equality slogans of the adult world. Children raised in the lap of luxury in expatriate homes, shared the same floor as children who grew up with just stars overhead and the pavement beneath their feet. Children who "have" forged links with a partner-friend from the "have nots". And from that friendship grew an enrichment in life by how differently each group was learning to perceive the other.

“My partner’s hand helps me concentrate better.”

The "have-children" were not cold and uncompassionate as the "have-not-children" assumed. Nor were the "have-not-children" uncivilised or devoid of fine human feelings so as to make them totally estranged from society. If not for a simple societal miscalculation in distributing advantages, there would hardly have been any difference between these children.

"Helping Hands", an activity run by the Grade 3-5 pupils of the Overseas School of Colombo (OSC) outside the mainstream curriculum, is a forum for projecting this humane outlook. As the name implies, the OSC students volunteer as helpers to children coming from less-privileged circumstances. "Helping Hands" is OSC's life-line offered to children from the Day Shelter for Street Children at Borella (DSSCB), to smoothen the rough edges of their stunted lives in whichever way possible.

The idea for the activity came from the higher grades of OSC, highly taken up with their community service programme and the teachers took the opportunity to extend the concept to the lower grades as well. "We had an overwhelming response from our students and their parents," said Champa Bryson, OSC teacher-in-charge of Helping Hands until recently. "Even after passing on to Grade 6, many students still come and help the programme."

"Helping Hands" come alive once a week when about 35 DSSCB children, ranging up to an age ceiling of 13 years, take a merry ride to the OSC. For them, it is a fun-filled outing. We stood at the rim of the spacious OSC playground as peal after peal of child laughter streaked from where they played together with their "foster-partners" - the OSC kids showing the less-privileged kids the delights of a more-broadly spanned-out childhood. Another step in their thorny climb towards a fuller social integration and acceptance, solidified later in the afternoon with learning activities in a lower grade classroom.

Letting barriers down during play.

Take a look at how OSC students jotted down their feelings in the "Helping Hands" project book. It is a better way of stating the achievements of the project.

"I joined Helping Hands because I like helping people how to count and spell things and I feel so great!," Ikram noted. "My partner is my friend and after three months of teaching him, I feel proud of myself as I have taught him a lot of things."

"We have only one chance at life and we have to make the most of it. We also have very lucky lives and should share as much of it as possible," wrote Christopher. How yet another expat child was clearly moved by the project is seen in, "I chose Helping Hands because I like to see little children smile and have fun and I really want to help children who may not have a father or mother." And, "My partner often smiles which fills me with joy! She is like my best friend!," from Sarah.

How were the DSSCB kids influenced by "Helping Hands"? "I wait till Tuesday as I love to be with my friend," Amila says. "I think Rashmi likes me. I play with the toys she gave me and now I am learning the computer." Learning process works both ways as expressed by Vasantha, "Jenny taught me English and I taught her Sinhala. Now I can speak a little English."

Comfortably sprawled amidst the colourful decorations of the classroom, DSSCB kids enjoyed a mouth-watering feast, served them by their enthusiastically-hospitable, OSC partners and their equally-keen mothers. "It's truly wonderful, being able to bring a little sun shine to children with so much deprivation," voiced one mother, as she rushed around, passing plates of cakes, biscuits and other sweetmeats. The get-together ended with the host children entertaining their visitors with the high-kicks of a modern dance and handing them large gift-packs of toys and food and monetary donations for equipment. Looking on, we were rewarded at the sight of happiness and contentment crossing the DSSCB faces.

"Occasionally, we bring the parents of DSSCB children to 'Helping Hands' to convince them of the attitude and behavioral change we are influencing in their children," said Anula Kahandagamage, child and adult-literacy teacher at DSSCB. "It makes the street-dwellers with roaming life styles realise that if they ever want their children to come up socially in life, they should have settled homes and a proper family life."

I was informed by S.M. Kirthiratne, Principal, Dharmaraja College, Kandy, of somewhat different parallel, implemented by the Education Department. "Our school maintains a link with a disadvantaged school in the outskirts of Sigiriya," he said. "Our old boys, A/L students and parents visit them about thrice a year and provide them with tutorial material, agricultural implements, play equipment and teacher resources." But going beyond that frame, child-to-child interaction could no doubt be the ideal way to uplift disadvantaged children to the social mainstream - the basic pedestal of friendship, love and concern from the more privileged, sharing a common forum of childhood can create a smoother passage for better social integration.

DSSCB, initiated in 1986, is run by the Sarvodaya Movement, with funds received from HOPE for Children, a U.K. charity. The project, begun with the objective of helping street dwellers and their children for a sustained behavioral change into "normalised" living, has made remarkable headway. HOPE helps the shelter with running costs, repairs to buildings and new equipment. DSSB is infused with the committed spirit and counselling of Kusum Wijesinghe, Officer-in-Charge and Anula Kahandagamage, child and adult-literacy teacher, both from Sarvodaya, together with other staff committed to the crusade despite frequent hardships encountering them.

Normalising street children

Sweet sixteen seems to sit on Wasantha well - gentle, intelligent eyes reposing behind the quiet, well-mannered demeanour. Already into Grade 11 with G.C.E. O/Ls just five months away, his mouth crinkles in a smile when I mention Maths and Science. "Those are my favourite subjects," he explains simply.

Had an aunt not salvaged him from behind the "betel-squat" on the Borella pavement at the age of six and given his future over to the safe-keeping of the Day Shelter for Street Children, his smile would have hidden different inclinations. Inclinations which would have shaped a ruffian, a street-walker, or a drug-trafficker. But Wasantha could thank his stars that the seamy surroundings of his childhood did not blunt his aunt's instincts of what he could become if planted on more fertile grounds. Today, he dreams of going on to A/Ls, securing a respectful job and may be, "If I make enough money..," continuing on to University education.

"Thusitha Aiya washed vegetables on the pavement for a Mudalali. But after joining the Shelter, he started reading books and even did an external degree," Wasantha's voice is full of optimism while his teacher, Anula Kahandagamage, corroborates his story. "Now he works in a private bank in Colombo."

Wasantha's "from streets to normalcy" story was launched when Kusum Wijesinghe, Officer-in-Charge, DSSCB, took him in to the Shelter's pre-school. Realising that trotting back and forth from pre-school to a mother on the pavement would ruin his prospects of "normalising," Wijesinghe proposed that the boy lived in the Shelter with the mother visiting him. Which he did for seven years until, satisfied that the mother and son were initiated adequately in the art of "normal living", Sarvodaya gave them a house making them a family once again.

"Normalising is not easy and we have to put in hard labour of love, protection and education," explains Kahandagamage. "Street-dwellers are like gypsies - one day in Nugegoda and the next day in Fort. Women have many paramours but no legally-married husbands. The children have either drug-addicted or drunkard fathers or no father at all. Although we persuade them to come to us, they remember us only when the Police catches them." A change of attitude in these deprived women and children for desiring normalcy is achieved by developing their skills and knowledge. The Shelter has literacy classes for adult women and catch-up education for children who have never been to school, until they are ready to enter the near-by Bandaranayake Vidyalaya for formal education.

"Many of the women have no skills even to draw a flower or make a paper boat for their children, let alone to read the time, use a toilet, maintain personal hygiene or give the children right love and nutrition. It's either bread and jaggery, apple and cake, or rice and coconut," Kahandagamage says. "We have to teach them the basics of how to talk, dress, cook and live." A challenge with ample rewards for DSSCB when the wandering families finally settle in their own spick-and-span homes, educated, employed and enjoying the tranquillity of full-fledged citizens.

"I used to think that "home and school" was just a dream and you, my teacher, made it possible," DSSCB teacher-counsellors are often told. "Teacher budhu wenna ona! (may you become a buddha!)" What more reward could any teacher ask for ?