Help educate 600 tribal children in India yearly

Greetings from Adharshila, and we are happy to bring you an update on the recent achievements of the amazing initiative that you are supporting.

July is the month of new admissions to the Adharshila Middle School. This year 22 Sahariya tribal students from Adharshila’s satellite schools supported by you have successfully made the difficult transition from primary school to middle schoo. They will now travel upto 7 km from their home to the Adharshila middle school in village Agraa to carry forward their education. These students reported significant improvement in their reading and writing skills in the satellite schools during the past year. This has motivated them to continue their schooling, something that children in the Sahariya villages seldom manage to do due to the poor quality of government primary schools.

Motivated by their success and with support from great people like you, we at Adharshila have opened six new satellite schools in six different villages. This has expanded our outreach to 13 villages and more than 800 young Sahariya tribal students.

In another landmark achievement, 8 of the 12 new teachers in the satellite schools are students who have graduated from the Adharshila senior secondary school.

We are also celebrating the fact that 16 Adharshila students successfully cleared the State Board examination for class 10. 

Ramraj is a first generation Sahariya learner who has studied at Adharshila since middle school. He graduated from Adharshila just this summer and immediately got a job with us as a Satellite school teacher at village Chentikheda. However, his first job appointment was really short lived, since he has now got an appointment for the post of Postman with India Post, the government run Indian Postal Services. Adharshila wishes him great successes in his new job!

Another Adharshila graduate and satellite teacher Kedar is leaving us to join a new NGO that is setting up operations in the area. Kedar is 24 years old, and his family had been displaced from the Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary when he was 10 years old. There was no functional school in his village in the forest, and he and his friends spent their days roaming in the forest and helping his family to meet food and livelihood needs. At the new relocated village, he started attending the Asha schools run by Adharshila from 2002 to 2007 in the villages that were relocated from Kuno sanctuary. Kedar is not just a first generation learner but also the only educated and employed member in the family. He has continued to pursue higher education and is currently enrolled in the second year of a BSc programme in the nearby town. He firmly believes his journey of graduating from Adharshila and joining Adharshila Satellite School paved way for his escape from the vicious trap of marginalization and extreme poverty.

In the past three months, Adharshila has recruited 15 new teachers and organized a teacher training workshop series in collaboration with the Regional Resource Center for Elementary Education at the University of Delhi.

A sports competition for local sports – kho-kho, kabaddi and swimming were organized for the students of the satellite schools and the Adharshila Middle and High School We also organized an essay writing completion in which students from all the satellite schools participated enthusiastically.

We are feeling proud, celebrating our successes, and looking forward to bringing you many such heartwarming success stories in the future. Our heartfelt thanks go out to people like you. Thank you for being a part of this deeply satisfying journey. We will be really thrilled if you share your views on our Global Giving page, and on your own social media spaces. Please do spread the word among your friends, colleagues and family too, so that the Friends of Adharshila worldwide continue to grow!