The Society for Door Step School

The educational needs of children of school going age in urban India are generally met by schools run by the Education Department of the city’s Municipal Corporation, government aided schools and unaided private schools. Parents, who have provisions in the family budget for the children’s schooling, enroll their children in the aided or unaided private schools. The Municipal schools cater to those children whose parents cannot afford to pay for their children’s education. The local self-government has provided infrastructure for and established a large number schools in the city. However, the system is not without flaws and for various reasons does not function at an optimum level. The computer center at schools is mostly neglected. Computers are either non-functional due to improper maintenance or lack of a computer teacher. Even if all these things fall in place and the center is functional, it is seen that always more than one child is using one computer thus reducing the individual access time for learning. This is about school going children, but the situation for out-of-school children is worse as they have absolutely no access to computers. With this, youth in the community also do not have access to computers which results in making them less skilled in the job market in the technologically driven world. Through the experience of running centers in Mumbai, Door Step School has observed that having basic computer knowledge boosts their self-confidence, helps in grasping the academic syllabus more easily and opens job avenues for youth. Door Step School has been running 5 computer centers in the different slums of Mumbai and since 2003 we have successfully reached out to more than 22,850 children. A computer center will cater to 400 children attending literacy classes of Door Step School as well as other children and youth from the community. We need your support to establish a new computer centre. Expenses of establishing and running one computer center 11 computers - Rs. 2,75,000 Printer - Rs. 8,000 UPS for each PC (11 x Rs. 2,000)- Rs. 22,000 Installation of antivirus, Window - Rs. 22,000 Electric Connection and fitings - Rs. 25,000 Furnitures Rs. 75,000 Total Cost - Rs. 4,27,000