This is Merlin. She is 81 years old and was found begging on the streets of Chennai. She hails from Burma and was married to a man in India, but members of her family started passing away as the years passed by, leaving her with no one, no money, and on the streets. Back in the day, she used to be a teacher of English, Maths and Tamil. Multiple kids arrived at her doorstep to take tuition classes from her.
A guy named Mohamed Ashik, who runs a social service Instagram Page @abrokecollegekid, found her and recorded himself having a conversation with her. He asked her where she came from, what job she used to do when she was young and how she is surviving now.
Merlin revealed that she fills her stomach by begging. On some days she gets food, on some days she doesn’t and she has to starve. But she is okay with whatever God gives her. When Ashik asked her what she wanted from him, she humbly asked for a saree, a blouse and a petticoat because the one saree that she had was in tatters.
Ashik was very kind to offer her a business proposal. He asked her to teach Spoken English via Instagram in the form of short videos and he would give her the money for each video.
Here’s a look at the video:
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We’ll circle back to what happened after that in a bit but you need to first know what happened after Ashik’s video of talking to Merlin went viral.
Merlin’s video where she talks to Ashik went viral on social media to the extent that some of her old students came to find her! One of them spoke to her sitting on the pavement and got a few of her other students from the past on video call and made them speak to her. They all shared wonderful memories from the past and that’s when the students decided that Merlin deserves a better life.
So her students got her admitted to an old-age home where she will be taken care of and will have wonderful companions to spend her time with!
Have a look:
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Now coming back to what happened to the business deal.
Merlin is now a teacher of English and has an Instagram account called @englishwithmerlin and posts videos teaching English phrases to her audience. And guess what? She has over 550K followers on Instagram!
Here’s a look at a video of her teaching English:
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This is why teaching is considered the most noble profession in the world. If you are a teacher, no matter where and how you are, your students will always come and find you! 🙂