Schools are sensitising junior students on ways to care for the aged. A Telegraph picture

The trend of nuclear families and a cosmopolitan lifestyle is widening the gap between the generations, leading to increasing isolation of the aged. To sensitise children towards their elders, some schools have undertaken a series of activities designed for the purpose by NGO HelpAge India.

The activities, spread over a fortnight to six months, are called the ?Helping Hands Project?. They are aimed specifically at junior school-level, from kindergarten to Class VI. The focus is mainly on grandparents, so that as children interact with them, they are sensitised into taking care of their own parents later in life.

From mock interviews of grandparents to discovering each other?s vulnerability through games and realising how they can help each other, to tracing family history by building a scrapbook ? all activities are designed to help forge bonds between generations without making it obvious to the child.

Although the project has taken off only in Ashok Hall (Palm Avenue) and Bidya Bharati this year, Birla High School for Boys, Mahadevi Birla Shishu Vihar, Garden High and Montessories like Tiny Tots and Mother?s Care are going ahead from next year.

Tuhina Mitra of HelpAge says: ?Since the project is very new, we have started off only with a couple of schools to get a feedback. Next year, we?ll approach a host of others, including La Martiniere.?

She explains: ?We have focused primarily on the junior school because it?s important to catch them young to create a lasting impression. However, depending on the feedback, we could develop a different project for high school children.?

The Helping Hands project is also a sustained effort to sensitise and develop the consciousness of the children, as opposed to holding talks or arranging occasional interactions with the elderly, which turn out to be one-off events.

Agrees Anjana Mallick, teacher-in-charge, Bidya Bharati, who has already implemented the project in her school, ?We had been sending children to interactive programmes with the elderly and HelpAge would also conduct talks once a year. But that was not enough. So, I decided to opt for this project and children of classes III and IV have been working on it for the past two months. Children from KG to Class II have joined some of the activities, too.?

The project made a palpable difference to the children. Shubhodipta Chakravarty, in Class IV at Bidya Bharati, says: ?I enjoyed every activity of the project and it made me realise that we can help the aged in many ways.? Samprikta Sinha Roy, in Class III of the same school, agrees. ?The activities taught me more about my family and to care for them.?

Even parents were happy with the project, says teacher-in-charge Mallick. She plans a repeat next year. ?I will send the Class III children to an old-age home and I?m sure the visit will hold a new significance for them,? she sums up.