A school under a highway is a sanctuary for disadvantaged children in India

THANE, India (AP) — It’s early morning at a traffic intersection in Thane, a city on the outskirts of Mumbai, the bustling financial capital of India that’s home to more than 20 million people. The roads are already crowded with commuters, while engines and horns fill the air with noise that’s amplified by the highway overhead.

About a dozen young children are forming little splashes of color on the gray tarmac as they cross a busy road helped by two men. They are arriving to attend an innovative school operated by the NGO Samarth Bharat Vyaspeeth, using shipping containers under the highway as classrooms.

Children will bathe, change into a uniform, and have their morning meal of tea and porridge before filing into air-conditioned shipping containers for lessons. They learn to read and write in the local Marathi language and English; practicing using computers; and conduct simple experiments in a science lab. In between lessons, they play soccer and traditional sports like kabaddi.

The school is a day-time sanctuary, promising some of the city’s poorest children a safe environment and three nutritious meals. In the evening they will return to homes on the fringes of the metropolis, many improvised from scavenged corrugated iron sheets, plywood boards and tarpaulins.

Vaishali Pawar, 10, and her two siblings attend Signal Shala, named after its location near a traffic signal.

“My elder brother has never been to school and is an auto driver. One sister has got married but I want to become an artist,” says Pawar.

Her parents were reluctant to send the children but were talked into it by the school.

Since 2016, the school is preparing children like Vaishali to appear for formal examinations conducted by the state education board. According to its webpage there are 57 students enrolled in the school which strives “to bring such children into the mainstream of society by addressing not only their educational needs but also their health and emotional well-being.”

Sonali Gautam Gayakwad, 14, says that If she had not joined the school, she would have been married off by now.