Challenges in getting children back to school after the pandemic

 

Delivering millions of smiles 

Most children like to play on the ground instead of holding books. As most of them crave more games and fewer studies, the pandemic outbreak was in their favour as it brought education to almost a halt. Due to the lockdown, schools were shut down and worked with alternate modes to teach to cope with the outbreak of the virus. These alternate methods, challenged the families that couldn’t afford technical gadgets for their children’s education. Based on the family income, underprivileged families had no choice but to get a helping hand in the family’s income. Hence, forced the child to quit studies and help them with labour jobs. Due to the education system going digital, children were deprived of resources and could not access online classes. The few who had access found it hard to cope with new methods of learning. Slowly, students lost interest in studying for long hours in a classroom environment.

 Pandemic not only imposed a huge challenge to mankind but also impacted children in many ways. Some of the major interruptions include lack of classroom environment, breaking of home-school routine and reduction in attention span.

 Did you know? 290 million children were deprived of education because of the pandemic.

 Recently, the Government of India and a few State Governments decided to reopen schools. This announcement excited the children as they were eagerly waiting to break the monotony of staying indoors and going back to schools.

 It was evident to mankind that the pandemic gave a hard time to the have-nots’ in terms of food, shelter, and medical facilities. During the Covid-19 pandemic, most of the children were affected and were deprived of food and healthy nutrition. Prior to the pandemic, this issue was taken care of by various NGOs in India and the Government together with the Mid-Day Meal Programme. As the pandemic outbreak scattered the students from school, facilities like free education, food, and health were paused. To overcome these challenges of getting children back to school after the pandemic, the services that were paused had to resume, like the Midday Meal Scheme in India. Schemes like Midday meals are an effective initiative to indulge students in coming to school even before the pandemic struck the nation. Therefore, children came back to school for their love for school meals.

 Akshaya Patra’s role in implementing midday meal scheme in India

The Akshaya Patra Foundation is a non-profit organisation that started implementing the midday meal scheme in Bangalore to feed 1500 school children in 2000. Today, the organisation serves nutritious meals to a million children across the country. The organisation is one NGO in India that strives to eradicate classroom hunger. Although covid-19 had an adverse effect on the education system, the organisation supported midday meal beneficiaries with happiness kits. As the students are back to school, the organisation is shares the excitement of children to resume the service of feeding children.  To help and feed the children who are back to school, donate online to join hands with Akshaya Patra and encourage a healthy journey of learning.