Help disadvantaged Bengali children + young people

The New Life Centre school in Sarberia has been awarded a bursary to build a day boarding centre for girls. Alindra Naskar the Principal of the school is keen for girls to stay on beyond the primary age. When the children begin at the school between the ages of 3 – 4, the classes are more or less 50% boys and 50% girls, but as you go up the school the number of girls decreases. In many cases as soon as the girls hit puberty, their parents keep them at home. They are afraid for their daughters to be out unchaperoned during the day.

In an attempt to overcome this, Alindra decided that a day boarding facility for girls would allow them to remain within the school grounds, until their parents can collect them after work.

In the photo we see some of the girls in the school in an after school sports session. These are a minority, whereas the boys who return for sports are many.

Wouldn’t you like to provide a better future for these girls by sponsoring one of them?

When I first visited the New Life Centre School in 2008, I was involved in a building project with a team of Hands Around the World volunteers, (two of whom are shown in the photos). We were there to assist the Indian builders to erect a building which could be used as classrooms in the morning and as a Vocational Training Centre for the women of the village, to sew and embroider after school.

I was there a month and as I watched the building grow, I asked Alindra Naskar, the Principal of the school if he was pleased with what we had achieved in our time there? I was measuring success by the size of the building and how much work we had done.

His answer was so typical of him.

He replied that when we had first arrived the children seemed wary of these strangers from a foreign land, but over the month they had seen us daily and by the end of the month were running to greet us as we walked to work, competing to hold our hands.

This is the success of the project; the children recognised us as friends and appreciated our help and support for their school.

I was struck by how I had measured our achievement in a concrete tangible way, but here we are five and a half years later and our hand held friendship could not be stronger.

Wouldn’t you like to extend your hand to these underprivileged children?

Alindra Naskar, Principal of the New Life Centre school in Sarberia is keen to provide the children with a rounded education. As well as the academic subjects, he also believes that Art and Sport play an important part in the
curriculum.

In the photo above we see the recent Sports Day and the Long Jump.

There is also the Art Competition each year when the children all submit drawings to see who is the best artist in their age group. This colourful drawing (below) is interesting as the snakes which are an ever present threat in the region are predominant. 

Competition is an important part of education, it motivates and informs children and should be enjoyable, as shown on the boy’s face in the long jump.

To sustain this growing school we are asking for sponsors to provide a steady income, and recently I sent them drawings that their sponsored children had made, such as the one here.

Wouldn’t you like to walk hand in hand with one of our children in Sarberia and help them to remain at school and improve their circumstances?   

Alindra Naskar founder of the New Life Centre school in Sarberia is always keen to meet the local children as shown in this photograph, which I took when I visited.

Alindra’s school now has over 300 children but there are many more local children who have to endure the government schools which provide little education, as I saw for myself.

I visited a government primary school with Alindra, at the invitation of the Headmaster. There were 4 classes in the school, the first room we entered had Year 1 and Year 2 students, age 6-7. There were no tables or chairs so the children sat on the dirty floor with their book on their lap. They had divided themselves into the 2 year groups but there was no partition or separation, and I wondered how they could concentrate with 2 lessons going on at once?

The room was very shabby and dark and there was an unpleasant odour, yet as usual the children were all smiles, and well turned out. The majority didn’t have school uniform in this class, but they did further up the school.

There are 250 on this government school roll but only 50% attend on a daily basis. Part of the Headmaster’s job is to find out why the children don’t come to school, but when he visits their homes he said that he finds that they are already working.

Thanks to your support, Alindra has been able to improve the lives of some of the local children, but in order to continue expanding, he needs more funds, or sponsorship of individual children, a more sustainable way of providing a secure income, which at present pays 35% of the school’s expenditure.

You could help Alindra do much more than just take this boy’s hand?

Your hand could change his life forever.

In August The New Life Centre in Sarberia celebrated the 65^th year of Indian Independence as seen in the photo. Alindra Naskar, the Principal, spoke to the children about the real meaning of freedom and the place of education in a free society.

I have attended several festivities at the school during my visits, and Alindra believes that it is important for the children and staff to celebrate together.

Here we see the staff sharing some snacks at the end of Independence Day.

The school is helped by Hands Around The World’s sponsorship scheme, but in an attempt to educate as many children as possible, Alindra accepts all children whether they can pay or not.

The HATW sponsorship scheme is providing a much needed boost to the school fees that Alindra Naskar collects from the children. There are now 19 sponsors and I continue to recruit sponsors in the belief that this is the way to
self-sufficiency for Alindra.

One of the latest children to be sponsored was chosen by Alindra as her brother drowned tragically two years ago and her parents are still traumatised by his death. Alindra believed that by sponsoring this little girl, her parents would be given hope for the future. There are a lot of deep ponds around Sarberia, so this is an ever present danger.

Wouldn’t you like to support the school, and make the world of difference in the life of a child?