Stories of Hope ⁽⁷⁾

A 9 year girl shows up late to the village government school, once again. The newly joined Physical Training Instructor (PTI) at the school asks her to take a run around the school grounds, as a form of punishment. While she is running, the PTI notices some sort of even pacing through-out her run. He puts her in the school Kho-Kho team. She starts excelling, and by the time she completes her 8th grade at the school, she has played at many state level competitions. Along with many girls of her village, she joins the high school in a nearby…

In 2006 a young mother of three, Kulveer Kaur, became a widow with her youngest daughter hardly a year old. With no education, no land, no other source of income, she chose to work at people’s farms just the way many others in her community did. During the busy days of cotton picking season, she would save the chai she would get at the farm and bring to her small hamlet for her kids. She sent all her kids to a nearby government school in hopes of them having a better life than she did. 17 years later, sitting in…

In June 2023, it was a usual summer day in Likhmisar village in Northern Rajasthan. Anju, the second of four siblings, took photos of her certificates and sent them to one of her teachers. Her parents, who never got to attend school, worked on people's farms and had left for their day's work. They had trusted Anju to pursue the right path. Sitting on the brick stairs of their quiet #PradhanMantriAwasYojana home, a realization set in "my time is over. I will never get to do what I wanted to do." Anju had been a sports-person. She knew the feeling of wins and losses. She…

A couple in their late thirties, doing what they see others around them doing - men working as farm laborers and women in MNREGA. A life of daily wages. But their life at home is different from most homes in that village of 250 homes. Raising three daughters and two sons, they try to build perseverance, hope, and hard-work in them. Even on the most difficult days, they ensure that kids go to the local government school, study at home, and are not pushed into daily wage work. It's not only the first generation getting education, it is the first…

Mentor - Pallavi Student - Aaina Aaina, like her older two sisters, studied at the local government school in her village Lakhahakam. The school, set up in the 1930s, has been witness to much; including creation of an international India-Pakistan border that now sits 3 km from the village. But the school probably hadn’t witnessed a student who scored impeccably perfect 100s in every subject, till Aaina came along. The teachers unanimously agreed that Aaina is the best student they had seen. It is those teachers who recommended Aaina to Hamari Laado. Aaina’s regret to date is that her 10th…