A contingent of 31 students of JBCN Pan Academy, Mumbai, a K-12 school for children with learning disabilities, has returned with encomiums from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (EFF) 2010. The five-day annual EFF is organised every autumn by Festival Fringe Society Ltd, a Scotland-based arts festival company. It attracts amateur artists, actors, performers and playwrights from education institutions in the UK and abroad. This year EFF welcomed over 21,148 performers to the scenic and ancient capital of Scotland.
“Ours was the first school from India as well as the first school for special children to have ever participated in EFF. We staged a musical Mumbai Calling which highlighted the eternal faith, hope and optimism of the people of Mumbai after the deadly 26/11 terrorist attacks in 2008. For our students this was truly a learning experience,” says Fatima Agarkar, director-partner of JBCN Education Pvt. Ltd, who led the children’s contingent to Edinburgh. JBCN Pan Academy was established in 2005 by Agarkar and Pinky Dalal, promoter of the Children’s Nook Group of Kindergarten Schools which has nine branches in and around Mumbai.
A commerce graduate of Mumbai’s well-known Sydenham College of Commerce, Agarkar studied business management at Birmingham University, and worked with Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, UK, after which she returned to India in 2000 and did stints with Times of India (2000-2002) and Egon Zehnder (2002-2004). In 2004, after her marriage with India test cricket star Ajit Agarkar, she quit the corporate world and co-promoted JBCN Education with the company’s chairperson Pinky Dalal and directors Hemali and Kunal Dalal. Currently the education focused company manages the Children’s Nook pre-schools, the K-12 SJBCN International (estb. 2010) and JBCN Pan Academy, apart from providing education consultancy services to several K-12 schools in Mumbai.
“Education of disabled children has so far been an area of darkness. Therefore JBCN Pan Academy provides its 140 differently abled students instructed by 70 teachers, facilities and learning aids on a par with the best available in the West. We want our children to be part of a global network of special schools with national and international platforms to showcase their talents,” says Agarkar who adds that 16 percent of children in the academy are from low-income households admitted on scholarships and freeships.
The JBCN model has to be “replicated a thousand times over” to meet the needs of an estimated 35 million special needs children in India, according to Agarkar. “At the EFF festival we became aware of the potential of a guild to raise funding. We are working proactively towards forming a guild to raise the standards of special needs schools and pressurise government and philanthropists to partner with us to increase their number in the country,” says Agarkar.
The Force be with you!
Swati Roy (Mumbai)