Implementing Good Personal Hygiene

Good education facilitates quality learning and a good teacher guides us to live a quality life. At Charhol Tajane Mala Balwadi in Pune, students have not only learnt to read on their own but have also learned about the rising need for hygiene to maintain good health. Santoshi Gangavane was successful in helping her students and their parents understand the importance of cleanliness, self-discipline and self-reliance.

Most of her students come from the underprivileged and marginalised socio-economic strata. She soon realised that before academics, she needs to educate the children about basic hygiene and its importance.

Proactively, she started conducting meetings with their parents and helped them to understand how to take care of hygiene on an everyday basis. Everyday Santoshi Tai would discuss with her students on health and hygiene and patiently waited for the change to happen. Apart from the hygiene classes, Santoshi would also implement activities that she learned from the training sessions conducted by the Foundation’s Shikshaantar program in association with Grammangal.

The Shikshaantar program was designed with an aim to enhance early-childhood knowledge and skills of pre-primary teachers teaching children in the age-group 3-6 years of age, by far the most important developmental stage in children. 

Eventually, her patience and hard work paid off as both students and their parents started cooperating. Students started cleaning themselves before coming to the Balwadi and few were even able to bathe on their own. Also, students would tidy up their classrooms by organising their books and other belongings as guided by Santoshi. Despite investing most of her time in working with the very basic attributes than academics, Santoshi was successful in helping her students to read on their own and few were even able to identify words without her help. This is the story of a teacher who worked round the clock for the betterment of her students in every aspect of life.