Pehchaan The Street School Noida Sector 35

Pehchaan The Street School Noida Sector 35
Nale Wali Rd, near Krishna Public School, Morna, Sector 35, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India
http://pehchaanstreetschool.org/
Pehchaan The Street School, Noida Sector 35, is one of six learning hubs started under the Delhi-based NGO Pehchaan – The Street School. Whereas its Head Office is located at Inderpuri in Delhi, the Noida branch has been functioning since the academic year 2018-19. The centre occupies two modest rented rooms on the ground floor of a residential society barely 300 metres from the Sector 35/18 underpass flyover, an area that has long been home to hundreds of rag-picker families, daily-wage workers, and small vendors. Every weekday afternoon from 2.30 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. the open courtyard transforms into a colourful classroom as sixty-five to seventy children aged four to sixteen walk in carrying their Pehchaan-branded yellow jute satchels.

The curriculum is CBSE mapping-compliant but is wrapped in a ‘Foundational-Literacy-Numeracy First’ model. From 2.30–3.15 the mentors conduct Immersive Reading Circles where instead of blackboards, soft alphabet mats and phonics flash cards spread across the floor. Hindi and English stories are acted out with cloth puppets that the children themselves stitched in a weekend art workshop. The junior batch (Balvatika – classes equivalent to nursery-II) moves to a corner room that has low bamboo tables, Android tablets pre-loaded with the Khan Academy Kids app, and a small library shelf filled with picture storybooks. The senior batch (Utkarsh – classes VI-X) works from 3.45-4.30 on NCERT workbooks, but every concept is reinforced with local examples—profit-loss lessons drawn from vegetable hawkers, fractions from vada-pau splitting, and integers introduced through gate-opening rules in metro travel. On Fridays, Science-On-Street happens under the neem tree where volunteers demonstrate air-pressure and magnetism using coke cans and refrigerator magnets.

Pehchaan Noida’s USP remains its Individual Learning Plan (ILP). The moment a child enrols, a colour-coded entry sheet is created noting the age, last school attended (if any), assessed reading level (using Pratham ASER tools), and academic or emotional vulnerability score. Weekly progress against this plan is plotted on wall chart ‘Race Tracks’ that celebrate every micro-milestone—moving from word to sentence formation, recognising 100 numbers, or solving a LCM problem. Holistic growth is encouraged through monthly ‘life-skills labs’ on gender sensitivity, waste composting, menstrual hygiene, and digital safety. Girls above ten receive free reusable sanitary napkins stitched by local women SHGs.

The facility is bare-bones yet child-safe. Two ceiling fans oscillate above beaten-down Daris, the rooms smell of chalk and fresh iodine from a first-aid tin donated by a neighbourhood chemist. A portable RO water unit and steel tumblers serve clean water, and a shoe rack keeps slippers tidy. Above the tiny blackboard is painted the Pehchaan mantra – “Pehchaan khud ki karo, duniya badlo.” The tiny, brightly lit hub is run by one full-time teacher-cum-coordinator (Ms. Anita, a B.Ed. holder) assisted by five rotating volunteers—three Noida working professionals and two final-year Amity students completing the NGO’s 90-hour internship. Transport is not provided; instead, volunteer bikers form the daily “Pehchaan Pillion” shuttle that takes dropouts from construction labour camps in Sector 34 at 2.15 p.m. and collects them by 6.35 p.m.

Admission is free and always open; identification papers are desirable but not compulsory. Parents’ consent is verbal and documented on a simple consent card. Community engagement happens through a WhatsApp group “Pehchaan Parents Parivar” where mothers share photos of nutritional tiffin ideas and fathers update the route of municipal rubbish vans hunted by their kids.

Within four years, the branch has mainstreamed thirty-one children into nearby government and low-fee private schools on conditional scholarships cleared with help from Pehchaan’s Delhi Head Office and mentoring funder Sai Krishna Foundation. The lock-down year of 2020 was bridged with mongo-packet learning packets and nightly Zoom story sessions; every child now recognises a QR code because of the remedial digital campaign. The little school in Sector 35 teaches more than alphabets—it teaches identity, respect and the promise that a footpath’s child can indeed own a seat in any classroom of the country.

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