Vivek Vani Shiksha Kendra is a little educational centre with a difference. Acharya Gour Ganguly once said that man-making - the all round development of the human - was the main aim of education, and not simply preparing professional careerists. For five years now, Vivek Vani has been offering educational support to slum children in South Calcutta neighborhoods like Dhakuria and Barisha. But the deprived environment in which the children grow up means that a lot of emotional and spiritual nourishment will have to accompany the educational help that the slum youth receive in order to ensure that they develop adequate life skills. Hence the unique functioning style of Vivek Vani Shiksha Kendra.
And Vivek Vani's mentor teachers (or 'mothers' as they are called by the students) such as Gopa-Ma (Gopa Deb) and Maitreyi-Ma (Maitreyi Chakrabarty), committed volunteer teachers such as Subhasree Ghosh, and large-hearted people like the wonderful Canadian family of Irene Booth, Bob Booth and Sally Booth, Anand Deb, Dr. Rajyasree Ghosh, Sudeshna DattaGupta, Dr. Rita Ganguly, Mou Banerjee, Arati Banerjee, and Cdr. Ranjit Deb have given a lot of their time, energy and resources over the years to helping the children who come to Vivek Vani blossom to their fullest potential - the lotuses that grow from the deprivation of Calcutta's slums.
The Vivek Vani Shiksha Kendra school is the pride of these children. It is their place, where they can get some peace when life gets violent or saddening in their homes. The little ashram on the roof of our Calcutta Centre is a place where they often come, even when there are no classes, to get some serenity and quiet. I find it inspiring to see the young slum youth of various religions come to meditate or read in the evenings at our Vivek Vani ashram when others of their age in the slums are going astray into bad habits such as smoking, drinking, or veering towards fundamentalism, party-sponsored violence, or other activities.
Here they learn not just things like spoken and written English, but also leadership skills and life skills. Gopa-ma has taken special care to provide vocational training to the students of Vivek Vani, so that they can earn a little pocket money to supplement their poor families' meagre incomes and get a sense of self-worth. She has organised mushroom cultivation training - every winter, the students now grow and sell oyster mushrooms on their own. We hope to connect the students to other such training programmes in future too.
Children from all religious backgrounds take the initiative in organising various festivals where they showcase their hand-made greeting cards and their art and craft skills, and also share stories from their diverse cultural backgrounds. There are cultural activities where the students dance, learn singing, even a bit of theatre, public speaking, thus developing their personalities and gaining confidence. You'd be surprised to hear the young people speak at the prarthana sabhas of Bibek Anander Satsang - they speak with such insight and confidence, one would think they are seasoned public orators! They have developed depth of thinking about social issues and about life and work, exactly as Acharya-ji wanted it: "The poorest and meanest of men should get the chance to develop to their fullest potential."
It's not just about vocational training or personality development. Slowly, the students are developing a deeper knowledge of yoga and meditation, and adapting it to their specific cultural/religious backgrounds, accruing an open mind and a strong spiritual foundation that will sustain them and give them inner strength throughout life. They have realised that most difficult of things - they have to gain such power of truth and non-violence that they can become sources of light for others. All power to these young people, and their teachers and well-wishers past and present at Vivek Vani. Jai ho!
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