Education India Project #47831

Give 400 needy children & youths a future in India

by HUMAN-Stiftung

Give 400 needy children & youths a future in India

Project Report | Apr 28, 2025
Keshwa Gurukul School: New challenges ahead

By Karlheinz Neumann | Founder and board member

Morning Assembly at school with singing & prayers

Our Keshwa Gurukul School has developed exceptionally well since 2022. Starting with just four children, we now have over 200 students from surrounding villages. In March 2025, the new sports and playground opened, where the morning gatherings, prayers, and singing take place.

Expanding the school to accommodate up to 250 students required the purchase of a third school bus, which can transport more than 40 children. We now have a total of three school buses, which we use to pick up and drop off all children who do not live in the immediate vicinity of the school.

The 2024/2025 school year was successfully concluded with the exams in March, and all children have been granted permission to advance to the next grade. The year always ends with a teacher-parent-student meeting. The new school year has now begun.

Under the leadership of the overall program manager, Mr. Hariom Tiwari, and the school principal, Mr. Satyendra Bahadur Singh, Keshwa Gurukul School has become a model of success. The majority of the children come from low-income villages outside of Robertsganj, and they enjoy coming to our school.

We would like to thank our principal, Mr. Singh. He has been with our school since June 2022 and previously served as principal and head teacher at other schools. We owe him a great deal. He is well known to the families and succeeds in winning parents to send their children to our school. He has managed to develop a well-coordinated and motivated teaching team. Without him, Keshwa Gurukul School would not have developed so positively in such a short time. One of his mottos is:

"Honesty is the best policy" is a principle I have always admired and lived by. I am committed to continuing my journey in education and social service, working every day for the betterment of society. — Satyendra Bahadur Singh

We have a permanent license up to grade 5 and a provisional license up to grade 8 at the moment. To obtain a permanent license, we need 1,200 m² of additional land to expand the playground and sports field. Currently, we do not have a specific piece of land in sight. We are hoping for grants to help us finance the deal so that we do not have to cover the expenses entirely ourselves.

The approval of a permanent license is of great importance to us, as it gives the children the opportunity to stay at the school up to grade 8. The high quality of bilingual instruction in English and Hindi, the excellent infrastructure, and the very low fees (compared to private schools with similar quality) have cemented the school's good reputation in the villages. School attendance is free for children from low-income families.

Parents and children are very satisfied, but the expansion presents us with new challenges on the path to our vision of "Give Children a Future."

Our school principal Mr.Singh

Our 3rd school bus

English grammar lesson

Year-end meeting 2024/202 with parents & students

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Dec 29, 2024
Outreach program for 300 families in Sonbhadra

By Karlheinz Neumann | Founder and project leader

Many people live below poverty line in countryside

Hundreds of families live in small villages in Robertsganj, Sonbhadra within a radius of up to 5 kilometers from our Keshwa Child Welfare Center, which are often widely scattered. Over the last few years, we have managed to contact 300 families and build a close relationship through countless conversations and trust-building measures. Often, many people (mostly siblings and their families) live together in one household. During our project trip in November 2024, visiting the families in the villages was one focus of our stay.

A significant number of residents in the villages are illiterate or have only a very low level of education and therefore live below the poverty line. Income is created by agricultural work, selling goods on the roadside and low-level labor work or municipal road construction. In many cases, the children have to help out to make a living. This is why some of the children in the families often do not go to school. Alcohol and cheap drugs are not uncommon, even among young people.

Our task is therefore multifaceted. The first goal is to convince parents to send as many children to school as possible. Since their homes are too far away to walk to school, we use our own school buses to pick up the children and bring them home after school. This has enabled us to register 199 children for our Keshwa Gurukul school in two years.

By surveying the family situation, we also know which families have people with disabilities. In cooperation with the government authorities, these people have at least some hopes to get support.

Through our women empowerment program and vocational training (skill program), women have the opportunity to receive training in our center in order to create a certain degree of financial independence in the family and to shape their own lives. This aspect is becoming increasingly important for women. This is a fundamental structural change in this rural region.

By combining the work in our large building with school and training program and the activities on site with the families, we create a broad and effective offer for 1,500 locals.

We cannot provide miracles, but we can implement our vision “GIVE CHILDREN A FUTURE” step by step. The next generation will significantly benefit from this.

Thank you for your outstanding support.

Several families live in one household

We ask parents to send their children to school

Many people work in agriculture

Simple huts or mud houses are standard homes

Staff from CIS visiting people in villages

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Sep 1, 2024
Keshwa Gurukul School: Preparing the next level

By Karlheinz Neumann | Founder and Project Leader

New Play- and sports-ground

When we started our "Keshwa Gurukul School" after the pandemic, we were unclear how our school offering would be accepted by parents.

Our approach is based on free lessons for many children but with a significantly higher quality than public schools. Private schools with a similar quality standard are not affordable for the majority of the residents in the Sonbhadra region.

We started with five children at the end of 2021, and now we have 150 children who are taught regularly, and our partner organization Creation India Society has a license up to grade 8. We will be discussing in the near future whether we will apply for a license up to grade 10 in the medium term. But all of this also has consequences, as our Keshwa Welfare Center is now well filled, as there is also a vocational training center for women in addition to the school.

The first measure is to prepare a piece of land (6,805 sqft.) that we bought four years ago for use. Due to the rainy season, the ground level of the property needs to be raised slightly in order to have dry ground within the area. A massive soil work had to be carried out.

As usual, a wall will be built around the property. The access to the property also needs to be constructed because we want to park our school buses there at night.

During the day, the property will be used as a play and sports area for the students, as well as for morning prayer and singing. We also want to do a small agricultural cultivation, which will be looked after by the children.

In any case, we need such a playground and sports area to get a license up to 10th grade and it will serve the children and teachers very well until then.

Most recently we also installed an extended fire extinguishing system in our Keshwa Child Welfare Center.

The total construction cost for the playground and extinguishing system is approximately USD 30,000. The work will be completed in September 2024.

Thank you for your great support.

Massive soil work had to be carried out

Big stones to protect against rainwater

Many pillars for the surrounding wall

Stone wall against water plus brick wall

Current lessons in one out of eight classrooms

Extended fire estinguishing system installed

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