A High School managed by Mumbai KSI Jamaat is funding education that is lifting girls out of the slums and transforming their life chances.
HA & LS Girls High School is run by the Jamaat for poor students for the good of humanity, with no bar on religion.
One such pupil is Ruksana Badshah of Masjid Bandar, who hopes that passing her SSC board exams will be the first step towards her dream of becoming an air hostess – and her ticket out of the slums.
A spirit of ambition
Her father died when she was five, she nursed her sick mother until her death a year ago, and now she looks after her disabled sister. Ill fortune has not dented the spirit of this ambitious 17 year old, however.
A Jamaat donor pays her school fees, and although she sometimes has to attend lessons in a dishevelled state she has never missed a class. She studies in a tin shanty at home, shared with her grandmother, older sister and her sister’s husband.
Motivated to ‘become someone’
Her mother’s enduring wish was for Ruksana to study and her family support her desire to attend college to pursue Commerce. English and Hindi are her favourite subjects.
Dilshad Thobani, Principal of HA & LS Girls High School, told the Mumbai Mirror: “I have tried to motivate her to become someone.”
He has certainly fulfilled that aim.
