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The final programme in this Robert Redford series looks at how social entrepreneurs are educating the world’s forgotten children giving them the chance to lead a life free from sexual slavery, discrimination and poverty.
Train Platform Schools in India
“For boys we say we have to reach them by 14, for girls we say if we don’t reach them by 10 they will be lost to prostitution or suicide.” –Inderjit Khurana, a teacher.
India’s train stations have become home to communities of the poor marooned after fleeing the countryside in search of a better life. With their numbers increasing the fight to survive on the meagre resources available has become impossible for many. Hardest hit are the most vulnerable, children, forced to survive either through prostitution or drug dealing.
While travelling to work by train, teacher Inderjit Khurana first came across the dozens of children who spent their days begging from passengers at her local station. Realising that it would be impossible to get them to school she decided to bring the school to them. With this vision she founded her train platform schools based on the ideal of providing a creative atmosphere where the children are equipped with the level of education necessary to allow them to work.
Her schools have been a tremendous success and by carefully winning the trust of the children she has managed to set up 20 platform schools that are attended by over 4,000 students. Despite the project’s low cost, $12.000 per year, Inderjit’s determination to expand her schools to stations all over India is held back by the government’s reluctance to fund her.
Undaunted she hopes that with more foreign aid she will be able to translate her idea into a model able to educate all of the countries underprivileged children.
Egypt's Schools for Disabled Children
“I believe it’s the role of the entrepreneur to go and find new ideas and solve society’s problems. It is much easier for an entrepreneur to do something they believe in then a government on a mass scale.”- Dina Abdel Wahab
Egypt’s disabled children have traditionally been the most stigmatised sector of society. Fear and ignorance has led them to be kept away from schools, hidden away by their parents fearful of the bigotry they face from the general public.
When Dina Abdel Wahab’s son Ali was born with Down’s syndrome she was forced to confront this discrimination head on. Not content to let her child become another victim of society’s ignorance she made the brave step of starting a preschool where Ali and other disabled children are included rather then set apart from the other students.
Her preschools, or Baby Academies are now thriving - Dina is planning to open franchises across the Middle East- and a remarkable 20 per cent of the preschoolers they teach have special needs. Now that she has proved the model in the private sector her ideas are being taken up by the Egyptian Ministry of Education and are being applied across Egypt in mainstream education.
Educating Young Prostitutes in Thailand
“Many parents believe that working in a brothel, hotel, karaoke restaurant or working in a factory are no different. But many parents have not seen the realities of the brothels.” –Sompop Jantraka
The villages along Thailand’s northern borders have become permanent refugee camps to thousands fleeing persecution and poverty from Burma, China and Laos. Stripped of citizenship and with no access to education, poverty has led many families forced to sell daughters into the country’s sex industry.
Mai Sai at the heart of the Golden Triangle - where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Burma meet - has become a centre for the trade, a trade native Sompop Jantraka is well aware of. After seeing countless children disappear into the country’s brothels he has made it his life’s work to save as many as he can.
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