Forty-one children of hawkers and street vendors who fared well in their respective examinations were felicitated by the Meghalaya & Greater Shillong Progressive Hawkers and Street Vendors Association today.
The awards were distributed by Martina Lyttan and L. Tariang, Magistrate and Incident commanders at Hawkers market in Polo Parking lot.
It may be noted that the association started its ‘Education Clinic’ to create educationally enabling situation for the children of its members. Through this intervention a number of students came out with flying colours.
Three students, Celestine M Marak, Malveen Malngiang, Payal Paul scored more than 75 per cent in their class X examinations. In the Higher Secondary examinations, Jasinta Sangma scored 77 per cent and Merlin Pathaw, 68 per cent. Two students Shumilin Rani and Khusina M Marak got first division in their final bachelor examinations in Commerce and Computers.
According to the association, the Umsohsun Dorbar led by its Rangbah Shnong, Paul J Sawian, graciously allowed the union to hold tuition classes in its dorbar hall.
The education clinic is run by volunteer teachers, Lalnunsanga Ralte, a well known English poet, Jo Wahlang, a computer science graduate from Chennai Mathematical Institute and a mathematics graduate from IISER Kolkata, Riban War, a zoologist and Akash Sil, a past top ten student of MBOSE in the commerce stream. Two of the teachers are children of street vendors themselves.
Upbeat by the results, the association said it will continue its education clinic programme this year which is to ensure that educational excellence does not remain a domain of the rich and the powerful. The clinic will also look into creating a supplementary educational programme which gives creative linguistic skills and scientific temper to the students, so that they can break the barrier of the class divide in Meghalaya and work towards creating a truly egalitarian State, the association added.
