Bhubaneswar: A group of youngsters from the city have started a learning centre at a slum in the Chandaka area here.

The group has been carrying out several social initiatives over the past few months such as health and blood donations camps. The idea came to them during one of their programmes.

"We were there to organise a free health check-up session and we saw a few children sitting under a tree reading some books. Unfortunately, there are no schools in the area and they were just reading some random stuff. That is when the idea came to us," said Shibasish Sahoo, co-ordinator of the project.

The school has been set up at a cost of Rs 50,000 that they have collected from various people.

"We have been collecting the money for the past six months. We reached out out to our friends, acquaintances and other people for collecting the funds," he said.

"For now, we have involved teachers from various colleges to take classes in the evenings. A number of youngsters will voluntarily take classes during the day. We will gave them basic training in academics and extracurricular activities," said Satyajit Ghosh, another member.

The group now teaches around 30 kids from the slum. But, the members admit the task is not easy.

"We had to host a number of awareness sessions to convince the parents. We did door-to-door campaigns and counselled them about the advantages of being educated," said Ghosh, adding that they have plans to turn the facility into a full-time school in future.

Awareness initiatives

Several youngsters from the city have taken initiatives to create awareness on various education-related issues.

A group of people have been visiting slums to sensitise parents about Right to Education (RTE) and the 25 per cent quota for financially disadvantaged sections of the society.

Ahead of the admission season, they are aiming to help parents admit their wards to various schools under the provision where economically weaker sections and disadvantaged groups get free entrance in private schools.

Abhisek Agrawall and Gaurav Pattnaik, two former students of National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, have started a website that provides online help to crack MBA programs provided by top educational institutions across the country and abroad.

Titled JAG, they also offer classroom courses apart from personality-enhancement programmes.