Teachers come together to make masks for rural underprivileged children

Amidst a pandemic, the world seems to have halted for a while. The Government has been making many efforts to spread awareness about COVID 19. Necessary actions are being taken to reduce the impact of the outbreak, including the nationwide lockdown. There have been a lot of measures as well, to aware the masses about the imperative steps that must be taken for prevention, such as social distancing, wearing masks, staying at home, etc. While every industry has been impacted one way or the other, education industry have also changed their way of disseminating knowledge as everything goes digital.

I am a teacher working with Satya Bharti School, Khandargarh in Sangrur district, Punjab. Ever since the lockdown began, we (my colleagues and I) have been ensuring that children continue to learn from home. We have been taking online classes, giving them assignments, encouraging them to participate in virtual co-curricular activities, but most of all, asking them to take necessary steps to stay safe and healthy. In consideration with the current situation, all of us have been trying to take as many preventive measures as possible for ourselves and our family. My mother-in-law and I also made masks at home for our whole family. Then, I began to think that there are so many of my children from the school who lack the means to afford or even make a mask for themselves. Many of these children who come to the school belong to underprivileged families and remote villages, who struggle on a daily basis to make their ends meet. 

I shared this idea with my team members and we all decided to take it forward. We used clothes available with us in our homes and started stitching masks. We invested our free time in making more and more masks. Eventually, we made enough masks to ensure that every student in the school has one. We also stitched an extra number of masks and stored them for future use.

These masks are prepared with our best wishes for our students and a hope that the school would reopen soon. We wish to, once again, reconnect our students in live classrooms, narrate stories, share our thoughts, and do projects and assignments together. We also have prayers in our hearts, while stitching these masks, for the pandemic to end soon. Even though it has been a difficult time, we have learnt so much during this lockdown phase and this learning will be taken forward in our life.

Throughout the period of this lockdown, we have stayed connected with everyone at Bharti Foundation. The Foundation has been directing us on maximizing the outcome of virtual interactions with our students and their parents. During this period, we grew a lot as individuals; now hopeful for a new beginning!

This article is contributed by Ms. Sarbjit Kaur who is working with Bharti Foundation as a teacher in Satya Bharti School Khandagarh, Sangrur, Punjab.