Case Study: Krishna Jha

Meet Krishna Jha, a student of MCA (Masters in Computer Application) who is simultaneously working in an e-publishing company where his responsibility is to make these e-books compatible with i-Pad and also create a reading language compatible for the visually challenged.

A regular day in Krishna’s life begins at 5.30am so he can reach his office at 7. At working for eight hours, he looks for some extra work, to gain more expertise and also to make a little bit of extra pocket money. Following which, he starts studying for his MCA before he spends some time with his family at night and then retires for the day. But was Krishna’s life always this sorted?

Krishna was just 4 years old when he stepped into Mumbai with family, having newly migrated in to this City of Dreams from Bihar, in order to escape the web of poverty and search for a better and quality life for the family. His mother, a housewife, and father, a security guard wanted the best of education for their children in an English Medium school, but the poor financial condition denied them the opportunity for that. However, Krishna’s family still settled for a local Hindi medium school where children from surrounding slums studied. However, due to lack of opportunities to identify his own strengths and weaknesses and hence he got very poor marks almost in all the exams and his HSC marks were extremely low at 41%. This meant no college scholarship for Krishna and with poor financial conditions of the house, now his dreams of taking admission in a good college for the course of BCA (Bachelors in Computer Application) seemed to fade away.

This was the time that the Higher Education team (then known as Future Smiles) was beginning its ground work to mobilise the communities of Andheri East and begin the process of scholarships for the needy children and this is when Krishna Jha also came in contact with the team! Krishna’s dreams were starting to soar. Soon he got admission in his desired course of BCA. However, as we have already mentioned in our other blog posts, the Higher Education project is not only about the scholarships, but overall development, hence includes capacity building sessions for time management, stress management, personality development, goal setting, career counselling etc and with the help of all of these activities, Krishna scored an 81% in his First year of BCA exams!

One day, at one of the community sessions of then-Future Smiles, a laptop started malfunctioning and Krishna’s quick thinking and technical skills came to the rescue of the laptop and that is when the team and Krishna realised that his true career path, and soon he took admission in MCA as well.

“I have been a part of Mumbai Smiles project since 2013 and my life has changed ever since,” says Krishna, “I was a quiet and alone kid, with hardly any friends due to lack of confidence and poor academic performance. I was scared of public speaking in any event and didn’t know how to speak English either. Today, after all the support and activities of Mumbai Smiles, I can confidently talk in English and present myself at a public platform with much ease and confidence. Last year, I had also participated in the Global Youth Summit and represented my college at this national platform! Thanks to Mumbai Smiles, I became a part of so many social activities in the communities where I have made so many friends. I want to now teach the younger children the basics of Computer skills such as Microsoft Office, Corel Draw etc.”

Today, as an ex-beneficiary of the Higher Education program, he is now a Change Agent of Mumbai Smiles, who is selflessly helping his community peers and other children to identify their strengths and take a step closer to their dreams and we are extremely proud of you, Krishna!