Our Story
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As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the world unimaginably. Looking back on those two years and the harsh repercussions of the pandemic that continue until today, it is apparent that education was one of the most impacted sectors. Tillu is a small hamlet near Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, where we lived during this time. We noticed that the impact of the lockdown had made children lose interest in studying at home. This happened due to poor bandwidth and no accessibility to phones for online classes. So they started loving ‘the new normal’, grazing animals and roaming with pastoralists in the jungle.
Hence, we started keeping free tuition classes for the kids and kept Tillu as its primary centre. Initially, we began with five students, and now we have more than thirty-five students from nearby villages such as Rakkar, Lunta, Nagrota and Khaniyara. These students belong to low-income families and schools. We all started by discussing our respective studies, regular errands and games. After a few months, the wave of coronavirus injected fear into our hearts and forced us to sit in our homes. But we stood together in this secluded village for a class during the pandemic when most students worldwide lost access to formal education.
Our only hope was to sit together anyhow with whatever precautions so that students don’t drop out as it happened in the rest of the world. Fortunately, we didn’t have a single student who dropped out during and after the pandemic.
Consequently, three girls from Tillu scored above 80% in their 10th state board examination, and one girl cleared St. Mary’s School entrance for admission.