When it was 2 kids, I was impressed. But then he said 140 and I was floored.

They had no money, no teachers, and no building. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t have school.

The story is simple.

One day a guy named Ramesh stopped to watch some construction that was going on in his area. They were building a subway. He took one look at the worker’s site and saw something drastically wrong.

“[I] saw the children of the workers playing in the dust and mud. I spoke with the parents and asked, ‘Why don’t they send them to school?’ They said: ‘No sir. We want them to be educated but the schools are too far away.’”

So he decided to open a school.


But here’s the catch.

Ramesh wasn’t a teacher.

(He actually had another job at the time).

There was no classroom.

There were no books, supplies, or even chalkboards.

There wasn’t anything set up online.

But there was some space under the bridge.

“I said, ‘OK, let me come tomorrow. I will take some time out from work and teach them.’ I started with two or three children. We had nothing, no resources. The students used to sit on gunny bags. I started teaching like this. Eventually I had 140 students!”

According to UNICEF, in India there are nearly 12 million kids between the ages of 6 and 13 who aren’t in school. Sometimes money has a lot to do with it.

It’s encouraging to see folks like Ramesh step up and make a way.

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