From a garage to classrooms: How Bengaluru’s slum children found their classroom

What began with five children learning in a small garage in 2004 has today grown into a network of 10 preschools inside slum areas. More than 1,300 children from families of daily-wage workers and domestic helpers now get an early start to education through the community-run centres – Building Blocks, founded by Suresh Ambat, who came to Bengaluru two decades ago and has been helping slum children access education since then in Bengaluru and across various other parts too. 

Mr. Ambat’s idea was born out of his memory of growing up in a small village near Alwaye in Kerala, walking barefoot to a government school, and realising only much later what those early lessons meant. Moreover, an accident he met with years ago became one of the turning points in his life.

“I kept wondering why I didn’t die, whether there was a purpose to it, something more to life than just going to work and making money.” That question, he says, stayed with him and gradually shaped his purpose to do something meaningful for children who had little access to opportunity.

When Mr. Ambat moved to Bengaluru in 2002, he was moved by scenes of ‘urban poverty’ - rows of cramped tin-roof houses, open drains, the constant smell of smoke and sewage. He then began teaching a handful of them to read and count in a garage in Bengaluru. Neighbours donated mats and notebooks and parents, many of them domestic workers, began sending their children too. By the end of that year, the five children became 20, and Mr. Ambat rented a room to keep the classes going.

“The first few years were run entirely on goodwill. Neighbours contributed notebooks, friends pooled in money to pay rent. It started with just people started paying attention,” Mr. Ambat recalls. As more families from the surrounding slums asked to enroll their children, he began to organise the classes into what would become the first of several preschools. Each centre now has around 70 to 80 children and a team of teachers, many of them women from the same communities. 

The first obstacle, he said, was trust. “In the early days, many parents in the slums were wary of free education offered by a stranger. Some feared hidden motives, others were suspicious because they had never seen a charity that aimed only to teach. That changed slowly. When they saw children coming home clean, singing rhymes, and learning, the fear disappeared,” he added.

Moreover, women were identified from the community and were trained to do door-to-door outreach. “These women then identified the poorest families, convinced reluctant parents to send children, and made follow-up visits to reduce dropouts,” he added. 

Supporters from all over

One of the earliest and most consistent supporters came from far beyond Bengaluru. Megumi, a Japanese woman who first visited one of the schools nearly a decade ago through Mr. Ambat’s Japanese friend, began sponsoring a handful of children. Over the years that number grew to more than 200. Another turning point came when a member of Mr. Ambat’s team happened to meet a Boeing representative at a hotel. The casual chat that followed led to an email, and eventually to a CSR grant, the first major corporate support the initiative ever received.

“I had never even filled a CSR form before. It was 25 pages long, and I didn’t know how to go to the next page without help.” With patient guidance from the Boeing’s Delhi office, he submitted the proposal, initially asking for $20,000. The representative suggested doubling it. “That one moment changed everything,” he recalled.

The funds arrived just as the project was struggling to sustain two schools. The support not only paid teachers’ salaries and rent but also allowed for upgrades- new desks, backup power supply, cooking utensils, and, for the first time, computers in the classrooms.

By 2010, the work had gathered momentum. A friend from Australia helped fund a third school. Soon after, a visitor from the Netherlands, moved by what he saw, partnered with Mr. Ambat to start another. That collaboration also introduced daily breakfast and lunch for all students, an intervention that changed attendance and health almost overnight.

“Many of our kids came to school hungry. Once they were fed, they could focus, and parents trusted us more.”

The initiative is sustained entirely through individual donors and corporate CSR support. The children graduating from the preschools are linked with sponsors who help them continue their education up to grade 10 in English-medium schools.