This tribal girl sows seeds of learning in her settlement

Coimbatore: Twenty-year old S Sandhiya is the first and the only graduate from the Chinnampathi tribal settlement in Mavuthampathi panchayat in the district. Without anyone to guide her with the studies, Sandhiya said she had a tough time during the school and college days. And she is determined to help the studious kids in the settlement with their studies, as she didn’t want them to go through the same hardships that she went through.
A BCom graduate, Sandhiya is teaching 15 children in the settlement regularly. The children, who are in the classes I to V, gather at her house around 10am daily with the books that they received from their school recently. She groups them based on their classes and teaches them.
To make it more lively, she sings traditional songs and dances with them when they seem to be bored. She also allows them to draw pictures once in a while. With a lunch break, the classes go on till 3pm. Some students stay back a bit longer.
Sandhiya says, “I am the only person to step into a college from the settlement, thanks to my parents who constantly reminded me about the importance of education. Most of the children in the settlement stop studies after completing elementary or middle school, because of several reasons. I want to bring about a change and support the children who long for better education. If they get right exposure, they will surely scale the ladder of success.”
It all began with tuition classes for the children in 2018, when she was in college. Sandhiya started fulltime classes during the lockdown last year, when schools started online classes. “We don’t get proper mobile network signals here and many of us don’t have smart phones. The children were sitting idle at home, unable to attend online classes. That’s when I started taking fulltime classes for the children,” she said.
Sandhiya, who also holds a diploma in warehouse supervision, had joined a private firm in Tirupur as HR assistant four months ago. She returned home in May, when the lockdown was announced. While she aspires to study further, Sandhiya said she can’t stop working because of the financial situation of her family. “I am planning to do postgraduate studies through correspondence.”