Week of March 19, 2011
Babar AliJocelyn Wiener/World Vision Update
Nearly a decade ago, Babar Ali, 17, founded a school in his family's backyard for poor children living in his village in West Bengal, India.
Description
In India, a country with the largest illiterate population in the world, a teenager named Babar Ali is trying to reshape education from the ground up. Since he was nine, Babar has run a free school for local children out of his parents' backyard in a rural village four hours from Calcutta. He now has hundreds of students.
Jocelyn Wiener spent a few days visiting with the young headmaster and his students.