Guest at Makaibari teaching computer to tea kids

The home-stay project at Makaibari Tea Estate is helping the workers’ children with their education in school and outside it.

While workers use the extra money they earn from tourism to send their children to school, one guest has taken the efforts a step further. She is teaching computer application and English to the children outside school hours at her own cost.

Kathleen Linton, who hails from Adelaide, Australia, has been at the estate, located 3 km from here, for the past four weeks. “I was thinking of helping the poor in any part of the world. While surfing the Internet one day, I came across an organisation called i-to-i, which helps people like us do voluntary social work in different countries. From there I got to learn about this tea estate and decided to teach computer application and English to poor children here,” said the woman who works as freelancer on government-funded projects to build education websites in Australia.

For the first three weeks, Linton concentrated on English but last Tuesday she set up two personal computers at a small centre in the estate to teach the children the basics of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and a few other applications. She added that on an average, about 25 children from seven villages spread across the plantation come to her classes, which are held in the mornings and evenings.

Linton said she is also looking forward to working with the primary school teachers of the area to give them tips on teaching English and computer application.

“From my interaction with the children, I have come to know that they are very talented and able. They are good at reading and writing English but are weak in spoken English. I am working on it,” she added.

Linton’s project at Makaibari is self-funded. She plans to spend around 3,500 Australian dollars (around Rs 1.2 lakh) on it, including paying for her own food and accommodation as well as buying paper, pencils, pens, crayons and some English and computer books for the children.

Sewan Pradhan, a driver at Makaibari, said his son has joined Linton’s course. “He is in Class VI and he had never even seen a computer till he joined the course,” he said. “It is good that such a project is being held at the estate because we cannot afford to send our children to private computer institutes in Kurseong.”

Source: The Telegraph