Delhi's Seelampur Basti rejoices as street vendor's daughter, 13 other slum kids make way to DU colleges on Merit

Delhi's Seelampur Basti could not stop rejoicing when 14 children who grew up here were abe to make their way to the prestigious Delhi University by the time the second cut-off list was out.

14 students, 12 of whom are girls, have secured admission in popular North campus colleges out of the 78 students who appeared for class XII examination from Seelampur slum area.

The highest scorer Saugatha has managed to secure a seat in Urdu Honours in Kirori Mal College at 86.5 per cent. Her father is a street vendor.

Even as the credit goes to these hard working students who have made their basti proud, significant efforts by an NGO called Asha in educating the slum children and helping them achieve higher education, has been instrumental in helping such bright kids enter Delhi University year-on-year.

Last year, a whopping 114 students guided by this NGO had made the cut. Sandeep, with 94% marks, got the highest score in this group in 2015. He lived in a slum in north Delhi’s Peeragarhi and managed to secure a seat in Rajdhani College for B.Com (Hons). The year before, in 2014, least 150 slum kids got admission in DU.

For these students, the main difficulty was not just to get resources to study, but a larger battle of convincing parents to allow them to pursue education as against using them to start earning and contributing to the family income. For Asha the NGO, there have been such challenges of counseling the family, especially that of girls, before they can start educating and preparing the kid for exams. Their help then extends to dressing them up with new clothes, planning their travel, helping them fill college admission forms, get educational loans for those who wish to study in private colleges.

Since 2008, Asha has been helping students from the slums to go to university. In the first batch, 20 students had got admission in DU and the numbers have been increasing since then. Although this year the students qualifying to DU are less than last year, its too early to say because three cut-off lists are still awaited.

(With inputs from agencies)