Help Indian Girl Not Work But Go To School

Dear Friends,

Hope you are doing well ! We are also moving forward with our students in child labor elimination school. Thought it is time to give you short update on our progress about child labor school. I will be vising SANTI in next two weeks - I am excited to see the results of our thinking and hard work to fulfill the dream of these children.

Last month focus:

We designed the curriculum for 3^rd and 4^th grade children. At the end of August, SANTI conducted an exam based on theoretical questions without any practical exam.

Children started learning to make soft toy and it was great fun for them. They really liked it; in future we will try to market those products in local shops.

We were building the training school for these children. Mr. Sarat Pati was quite busy monitoring the construction of building the roof for SANTI children.

Challenges in past:

Attendance in our child labor school is an ongoing issue. The local contractors hire these children temporarily and pay them for working on building road or housings. These children don’t show up in SANTI School to learn the sewing or attend classes. Although we provide them free lunch and free training children leave us when they get temporary money for their work under a contractor.

We have only 3 machines to teach the sewing to a class of 35 children, so you can imagine how tough it is for the teacher as well as learner to learn sewing.

We don’t have adequate space to train 35 children under one roof at a time. Our rental place was a challenging venue for this effort, keeping in mind this is the best we can get in this village.

Changing the course of river:

We had to think hard as it is not providing the result that I wanted. Now I am looking for a better progress and only way to achieve it is by reducing number of students and a focused training. We are discussing about optimal number of students to teach sewing every day. Let we have fewer children and focused on few products. We will be collaborating with local market experts to help us to teach these children so that they can become professional one day.

We will also be reducing one staff and may be eliminate the mid-day lunch. This may bring only students who are serious to become successful. In the mean time we will be buying more sewing machines.

As I mentioned before, we are a result oriented charity organization and we will change our course of journey to make it meaningful.

Thanks for your continual support, please enjoy the progress on building the roof project.

Ashok Dandpat