(: JingHi guys, remember sometime ago i talked about the boy who build windmills and generated electricity? This is another amazing story my university prof shared with us, and i thought you guys should see this! this guy here's is a REAL 16 yr old who leads 800 students in his "school" check it out! there's even a video (: "Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit,in faith, in purity." 1 Tim 4:12 love, jing. Tour of the school set up by 16-year-old Babar Ali Around the world millions of children are not getting a proper education because their families are too poor to afford to send them to school. In India, one schoolboy is trying to change that. In the first report in the BBC's Hunger to Learn series, Damian Grammaticas meets Babar Ali, whose remarkable education project is transforming the lives of hundreds of poor children. At 16 years old, Babar Ali must be the youngest headmaster in the world. He's a teenager who is in charge of teaching hundreds of students in his family's backyard, where he runs classes for poor children from his village. The story of this young man from Murshidabad in West Bengal is a remarkable tale of the desire to learn amid the direst poverty.
Babar Ali's day starts early. He wakes, pitches in with the household chores, then jumps on an auto-rickshaw which takes him part of the 10km (six mile) ride to the Raj Govinda school. The last couple of kilometres he has to walk. The school is the best in this part of West Bengal. There are hundreds of students, boys and girls. The classrooms are neat, if bare. But there are desks, chairs, a blackboard, and the teachers are all dedicated and well-qualified. As the class 12 roll-call is taken, Babar Ali is seated in the middle in the front row. He's a tall, slim, gangly teenager, studious and smart in his blue and white uniform. He takes his notes carefully. He is the model student. Babar Ali is the first member of his family ever to get a proper education. "It's not easy for me to come to school because I live so far away," he says, "but the teachers are good and I love learning. And my parents believe I must get the best education possible that's why I am here." Raj Govinda school is government-run so it is free, all Babar Ali has to pay for is his uniform, his books and the rickshaw ride to get there. But still that means his family has to find around 1,800 rupees a year ($40, £25) to send him to school. In this part of West Bengal that is a lot of money. Many poor families simply can't afford to send their children to school, even when it is free. The 16-year-old has made it his mission to help hundreds of other poor children in his village. The minute his lessons are over at Raj Govinda school, Babar Ali doesn't stop to play, he heads off to share what he's learnt with other children from his village. At four o'clock every afternoon after Babar Ali gets back to his family home a bell summons children to his house. They flood through the gate into the yard behind his house, where Babar Ali now acts as headmaster of his own, unofficial school. Lined up in his back yard the children sing the national anthem. Standing on a podium, Babar Ali lectures them about discipline, then study begins. Babar Ali gives lessons just the way he has heard them from his teachers. Some children are seated in the mud, others on rickety benches under a rough, homemade shelter. The family chickens scratch around nearby. In every corner of the yard are groups of children studying hard. Babar Ali was just nine when he began teaching a few friends as a game. They were all eager to know what he learnt in school every morning and he liked playing at being their teacher. Now his afternoon school has 800 students, all from poor families, all taught for free. Most of the girls come here after working, like Chumki, as domestic helps in the village, and the boys after they have finished their day's work labouring in the fields. "In the beginning I was just play-acting, teaching my friends," Babar Ali says, "but then I realised these children will never learn to read and write if they don't have proper lessons. It's my duty to educate them, to help our country build a better future." Including Babar Ali there are now 10 teachers at the school, all, like him are students at school or college, who give their time voluntarily. Babar Ali doesn't charge for anything, even books and food are given free, funded by donations. It means even the poorest can come here. "Our area is economically deprived," he says. "Without this school many kids wouldn't get an education, they'd never even be literate." Seated on a rough bench squeezed in with about a dozen other girls, Chumki Hajra is busy scribbling notes. Her dedication to learning is incredible to see. Every day she works in homes in the village from six in the morning until half past two in the afternoon, then she heads to Babar Ali's school. At seven every evening she heads back to do more cleaning work. Chumki's dream is to one day become a nurse, and Babar Ali's classes might just make it possible. The school has been recognised by the local authorities, it has helped increase literacy rates in the area, and Babar Ali has won awards for his work. The youngest children are just four or five, and they are all squeezed in to a tiny veranda. There are just a couple of bare electric bulbs to give light as lessons stretch into the evening, and only if there is electricity. And then the monsoon rain begins. Huge drops fall as the children scurry for cover, slipping in the mud. They crowd under a piece of plastic sheeting. Babar Ali shouts an order. Lessons are cancelled for the afternoon otherwise everyone will be soaked. Having no classrooms means lessons are at the mercy of the elements. The children climb onto the porch of a nearby shop as the rain pours down. Then they hurry home through the downpour. Tomorrow they'll be back though. Eight hundred poor children, unable to afford an education, but hungry for anything they can learn at Babar Ali's school. |
yay thats all for our weekly adventure @ jurong point! (:Hi guys!!!
really inspiring article about a African youth! He was only 14 years old.. nothing is impossible if you can fight for your dreams! success is spelt D-O-S-O-M-E-T-H-I-N-G!
love, jing (:
(CNN) -- William Kamkwamba dreamed of powering his village with the only resource that was freely available to him.
William Kamkwamba fits a lightbulb to a house in his village in Malawi.
His native Malawi had gone through one of its worst droughts seven years ago, killing thousands. His family and others were surviving on one meal a day. The red soil in his Masitala hometown was parched, leaving his father, a farmer, without any income.
But amid all the shortages, one thing was still abundant.
Wind.
"I wanted to do something to help and change things," he said. "Then I said to myself, 'If they can make electricity out of wind, I can try, too.'"
Kamkwamba was kicked out of school when he couldn't pay $80 in school fees, and he spent his days at the library, where a book with photographs of windmills caught his eye.
"I thought, this thing exists in this book, it means someone else managed to build this machine," he said.
Armed with the book, the then-14-year-old taught himself to build windmills. He scoured through junkyards for items, including bicycle parts, plastic pipes, tractor fans and car batteries. For the tower, he collected wood from blue-gum trees.
"Everyone laughed at me when I told them I was building a windmill. They thought I was crazy," he said. "Then I started telling them I was just playing with the parts. That sounded more normal."
The windmills generate electricity and pump water in his hometown, north of the capital, Lilongwe. Neighbors regularly trek across the dusty footpaths to his house to charge their cellphones. Others stop by to listen to Malawian reggae music blaring from a radio.That was 2002. Now, he has five windmills, the tallest at 37 feet. He built one at an area school that he used to teach classes on windmill-building.
When he started building the first windmill in 2002, word that he was "crazy" spread all over his village. Some people said he was bewitched -- a common description for people with perplexing behavior in some African cultures.
"All of us, even my mother, thought that he had gone mad," said his sister Doris Kamkwamba.
Villagers would surround him to snicker and point, Kamkwamba said. Ignoring them, he would quietly bolt pieces using a screwdriver made of a heated nail attached to a corncob. The heat -- from both the crowd and the melted, flattened pipes he used as blades -- did not deter him.
Three months later, his first windmill churned to life as relief swept over him. As the blades whirled, a bulb attached to the windmill flickered on.
"I wanted to finish it just to prove them wrong," he said. "I knew people would then stop thinking I was crazy."
Kamkwamba, now 22, is a student at the African Leadership Academy, an elite South African school for young leaders. Donors pay for his education.
His story has turned him into a globetrotter. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, an avid advocate of green living, has applauded his work. Kamkwamba is invited to events worldwide to share his experience with entrepreneurs. During a recent trip to Palm Springs, California, he saw a real windmill for the first time -- lofty and majestic -- a far cry from the wobbly, wooden structures that spin in his backyard.
Former Associated Press correspondent Bryan Mealer, who covered Africa, wrote a book, "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind," after hearing Kamkwamba's story. The book was released in the United States last week.
Mealer, a native of San Antonio, Texas, said he lived with Kamkwamba in his village for months to write the book. The story was a refreshing change after years of covering bloody conflicts in the region, Mealer said.
Kamkwamba is part of a generation of Africans who are not waiting for their governments or aid groups to come to their rescue, according to the author.
"They are seizing opportunities and technology, and finding solutions to their own problems," Mealer said. "One of the keys of his success is ... he's never wanted to rest on his laurels."
