Online class is not the only responsibility that teachers are taking these days. Teachers in a West Bengal’s government college are also looking after their students hit by the cyclone Amphan.
Teachers of Dakshin Barasat Dhruba Chand Halder College have come forward to provide relief materials to the Amphan-affected students of the college. “We are doing it in a different way. Instead of going through any club or NGO or local body, we ourselves are listing our own affected students, and with the help of our student volunteers, reaching out directly. We are buying the things ourselves and distributing these to them. We would appreciate if others joined us in this project, with financial or any other kind of help,” said Sudakshina Sengupta, a professor of the college.
The areas covered include students living in the city suburbs like Baruipur, Gocharan, Barasat and Joynagar in North 24-Parganas in the first phase. The reach will extend to Lakshmikantapur and Namkhana in South 24-Parganas next week. The districts of South and North 24-Parganas bordered Kolkata have been ravaged extensively by the cyclone Amphan.
The items distributed are daal, potatoes, onions, sugar, biscuits, puffed rice, poha, toothpaste, soaps, match boxes, masks, sanitary napkins and ORS. Some of these items were sponsored by well-wishers outside the teaching community. In the second phase, potato and onion will be replaced by mustard oil, soya bean, sattoo and turpulins to those students who have not received government aid.
“Once the idea of reaching out to our needy students was initiated, we were joined by a few others who donated money for the cause. Later, this idea gained momentum mainly through a word of mouth campaign and many of our friends and family members started contributing to the cause, said Sengupta.
“Once the cash flow became sufficient, we placed our orders at a Reliance store and other outlets (for ORS, napkins and masks. We ourselves collected all the articles, put those into bags and distributed these at different points. Two of our faculty members drew up a list of affected students from different departments, after having communicated with them over phone,” she added.
As the next step, the student volunteers who are members of the current E-Staff, a committee to help the authorities in all programmes in the campus, were approached and they came forward to lend their hands. The number of beneficiaries in each zone was determined and our student volunteers met us at these points and collected these packets. They in turn, distributed these packets to the individual students, according to the list sent to them. “We crosschecked by calling up students at random and found that the system was perfectly in place. In this way, we could reach 150 students and their families. We are planning to reach out to 500 students in this way,” Sengupta said.
Source:Times of India
