Help educate 600 tribal children in India yearly

Thank you again for your help to the Adharshila School. The fund transfer from Global Giving to us has only come through to us recently, and we're very excited about using the funds raised to start 2 new schools. 

The 2 new schools will be set up in 2 tribal villages called Paira and Agraa. The schools will become operational with the start of the new academic year in April 2014. This will bring at least 110 new children into the direc ambit of Adharshila’s activities.

Paira is a tribal village in which not many children attend the local primary school regularly. The village has more than 200 children in the 4-15 age group, and we hope to bring at least 55 of these to school from April 2014. Like in the other Adharshila village schools, we will place two young teachers at the government primary school building in village Paira. These teachers will conduct classes during regular school hours, either with or without the assistance of the government school teachers.

The other school will be started in village Agraa. Children from Agraa's tribal settlement have a very low school attendance rate. This is despite the presence of government schools here. The main reason cited by the local Adivasi community is that the children and parents do not prefer to attend schools with a mixed population including children from upper caste families, due to village power dynamics. Using funds donated generously by you, we will hold special classes for tribal children within their settlement every evening in a friendly, familiar and non-intimidating environment. Through this, within a year, we hope to improve their enrolment and attendance in formal schools.

Using funds donated for sports and other activities, an inter-school Sports Meet was held at Adharshila on 14 December. In all 22 gold medals were at stake. It was a day-long event and all the participants were provided with lunch boxes. Around 600 children from 29 schools other than Adharshila came to participate in the event. The winners were given medals and certificates. The accompanying teachers were also given encouragement gifts. The travel expenses of all participating schools were borne by Adharshila.