Pole star shines on Gurgaon, brings smiles to poor kids

A Polish woman who came to India to hone her boardroom skills finds herself teaching underprivileged children in Gurgaon's classrooms instead, the smiles on the faces of her wards bigger motivation than the lure of a corporate career.
Such is Ewelina Janus' conviction that she has adopted Gurgaon as her home to pursue her dream of educating children from poor families.She says she was moved by the social inequity she saw in India while travelling for her traineeship with a Delhi-based organization. It reoriented her targets: from career-building to building lives. In the three years she has been here, Ewelina has set up a school in Carterpuri where more than 200 kids now learn their alphabets and discover their talents.
It was a lonely struggle initially. Worse, she missed home, family, food and the good things of a life like any other woman in her mid-twenties would. But Ewelina didn't give up and found like-minded associates who agreed to work with her. Finding funds was the next step: it came in the form of generous donations from Ewelina's foreigner friends and the associates.
The school, which operates both during the day and at night, was constructed in the precincts of Gurgaon's 'gaushalas' - Kamdhenudham and Nandidham - taking shape inside makeshift rooms. "There was great financial constraint, necessitating innovations and adjustments at every step. However, the smiles on the faces of the children were too motivating to make any obstacle seem big," Ewelina says. "Today, my Indian friends and I have able to create three classrooms and a library and also a corridor that doubles as two classrooms. A temple's premises are also available for use for extracurricular activities like drama, dancing, music, art and craft. There are two more rooms for vocational training."
Buoyed by the success, Ewelina hopes to replicate this model all over India and hopes more people will come forward to help.
She is also keen to work in flood-ravaged Uttarakhand.
Ewelina, who holds a bachelors degree holder in professional training and development from Rheinisch-Westfälisch-Technische University in Aachen, Germany, has been using those skills to motivate and guide volunteers and partners from slum areas in her work.
She has widely travelled different remote regions of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. "I interacted with smiling children in Tamia, Patalkot, Orchha, Khuri and Alsisar. I have also worked with illiterate, poor parents who migrate to Delhi and Mumbai for work and it is really a wonderful experience to work for them," she said.
She is also the person who started Gurukul Kalpataru, a centre for culture training for women and children.
Sector 15
Sector 15 is an upscale area of Gurgaon. It has several well-maintained parks but the roads are in a bad state after the monsoon. Property rates in the area are, however, high due because it's near the national highway.