Dreams are all that make some children in the city open their books everyday. Over 50 of them were felicitated on Tuesday by the NGO Apne Aap Women Worldwide for continuing studies despite severe constraints.

The children are first-generation learners born mostly to sex workers in Bangladesh, Nepal, north Bengal, Orissa and the Northeast.

“My mother does not want me to visit her often. She tells me to study hard and get a better life. I visit her only on weekends,” said Sheela, one of the students.

She has been staying at the NGO’s night crèche for four years. “I love studying history and want to be a teacher,” said the Class VI student of Bankim Ghosh Memorial School.

Sheela, who idolises Nelson Mandela, is not the only one fired by ambition. Sabina, a Class X student of the National Institute of Open School (NIOS), aspires to be a lawyer. A victim of domestic violence in the Topsia slum where she stays, the teenager wants to take up cudgels for the deprived.

Asha, a resident of the same area and a Class IX student at the NIOS, wants to become a social worker and campaign against trafficking. “I have seen trafficking from close quarters and want to make a difference to the lives of people who are exploited,” said the girl, one of the speakers at the Indian Social Forum in Delhi in 2006.

The children love to dance, act and read, just like everyone else of their age. “I like carpentry and computers. Maybe I will do a bit of both when I grow up,” said Jamal, a student of Class VI at Shree Shantiniketan Vidyalaya.

Not all the parents have sent their wards willingly to school. Komal stays in a slum where trafficking is rampant and her father wants to marry her off soon. He feels she is more vulnerable than other girls because of the absence of her mother, who died early.

But love for studies has kept Komal, who looks after five younger siblings and does all the household chores, bound to her books. She dreams of going to college.“Komal is so intelligent that we are thinking of shifting her from the open school to a formal one,” an official said.

“Six students sat for their Class X exams this year. All of them want to continue studies,” Ruchira Gupta, the founder president of Apne Aap, said.

The NGO also provides the children vocational training.

(The names of the students have been changed)