Today I would like to introduce you to a very shy boy. His name is Lokesh, he is eight years old and he is now studying in the UKG, our second pre-school class.
Lokesh has three sisters, two of them older and one younger than he himself. His eldest sister is 16 years, the next one 14 and the youngest sister is only five years old. Together with their mother and father, they live in a three-room house. One of these rooms however is not used for living but for business.
Lokesh’s father is storekeeper for a shop nearby. Well, if you can call that a storekeeper: he buys cheap toasters, fans, plastic boxes and other home utensils and machines in Mathura, stores them in his home and brings them to a small shop a few streets further whenever needed there. It doesn’t bring much money – for food, the family of six depends on their small field.
That is why Lokesh’s elder sister does some tailoring – to get some pocket money to help the family or afford something for herself from time to time.
Their home is their father’s inheritance, just like the part of their field that they are harvesting from. The house is very simple, made of bricks and with their belongings on the floor or a few simple shelves on the walls.
Lokesh has started at our school last year, in 2013 and in the LKG, our lowest pre-school class. He is, as I mentioned already, a very shy boy. At the beginning, he even didn’t want to come to school some days and cried when his mother tried to drop him off. With some chocolate, we could convince him however to stay and the teachers managed to make him enjoy the time with other children, games and songs.
It takes Lokesh some time to learn what is being taught but he manages to follow the lessons. And over the course of one year, he also made some friends!
We are looking forward to seeing him develop over the years! If you would like to help us in supporting children like Lokesh, you can sponsor a child or the food for a day – we thank you in advance!