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The school building is now fully functioning, and has been built in the village of Chakarsi, in District J.P. Nagar, in Uttar Pradesh, approximately 130 kilometres north-east of Delhi. In this area there are many fee-paying schools, but most of these are not accessible to the poorest families. The fee problem combined with the traditionalism which bars many girls from attending mixed schools amounts to a very bad situation for poor children.

The villages around Chakarsi are home to a very basic standard of living. These people are extremely poor, and all members of the family contribute to the family’s livelihood, however they are generally not so hard-pressed that they cannot afford to release their children for the school day, or pay the very smallest of fees. Farming here is completely un-mechanised, with virtually no motor vehicles at all, except for a few tractors. The labour is all manual, and their existence is centred purely around the acquisition of food.

The general consensus is that these families would like to send their children to school, providing it is not to difficult to do so. Most of them do manage to scrape together the money to send their children to the existing very basic schools, but some are prevented from doing so either because there is no free school, or because they do not want to send their girls to mixed-gender schools.

We have already gained the trust of many of the people in these villages, and have consulted them on issues such as whether or not to make the school girls-only, and whether they want a uniform. The school will be initially for the most basic level, two pre-school classes and four primary classes. We are taking girls only, to create an environment where they will feel confident, safe and uninhibited.

Girls and women in India suffer from a constant undermining of their confidence, and are in general raised not to believe in their own thoughts, abilities or worth. They are, for the most part, conditioned to live their lives initially around the needs and wants of their brothers and fathers, and then after marriage, those of their husband and sons. They are also the hardest workers in Indian society, often engaging in economic activity of one type or another, as well as taking care of the home and children. This school will be entirely geared to building girls’ confidence in themselves, their judgement and self-esteem. The hope is that they will then be equipped to deal on a more equal footing with the world around them, be more equal members of their own society, and raise smaller, healthier families. When more funding is secured, we plan to expand the school through high school level and we also hope eventually to build a separate, adjacent school for boys.

The planning of the building itself has been done for a much larger building, taking into account our eventual expansion, while only the main trunk of the first floor has been built at this stage. We have a long corridor with four large classrooms down either side, as well as two office rooms. There is a large stairwell at each end of the corridor so that the first floor is accessible, for when we expand to that level. We are also planning on building a library and science labs at the back of the building on the ground floor, and a substantial administrative block at the front, for when we have out-grown the present smaller office rooms. If looking at the future completed building from the air, it will appear as a capital I, with the bottom horizontal (labs and library) slightly larger than that top (offices).

We have a proper drinking water facility, provided by the clean, natural ground water, and a proper toilet block. This consists of a separate building a few metres from the school building, reached by a raised pathway (to avoid the mud of the monsoon season). There are five proper toilet cubicles, with wash hand basins. This is something these children will never have seen before. In the school building we have proper desks (which these children will also never have had before now), and classroom necessities like books and stationery. There is a play area outside, and security is provided by the eight-foot boundary wall around the premises. This wall takes care of security of the building at night, as well as security for the children during their school day, while also minimising disruption from outside during the school day.

We were unable to provide free of cost transportation, however the parents have organised themselves to arrange transportation for those living in the more out-lying villages. Custom over-sized auto rickshaws are used for this, as in the cities. We were worried about the process of getting to school being an obstacle, or a hazard, but in the final analysis we had neither the time nor the funding to manage to provide this. It is highly encouraging however that the parents are seeing this as worth while enough to arrange this on their own. The project seems to be having a knock-on effect in terms of fostering cooperation and community spirit.

We had a great amount of difficulty finding the calibre of staff that we were looking for. We advertised in national, regional and local newspapers; we advertised on India ’s biggest jobs website; we used word of mouth. Still though it took us an inordinate amount of time to find staff that were good enough but that were not demanding city, private school salaries. This situation was extremely worrying as the entire point of this project is the quality of the education, and we really began to fear the worst.

In the end though things finally came together in a quick succession of events. We had already settled on our head teacher, Mr. Gopal Singh, who has many years of experience as the head of the primary section of a renowned academy in a city some kilometres away. We managed to convince him to leave his present position to head up this entire project (on the teaching and administrative side). He has innovative ideas and is extremely enthusiastic about the project. As none of the board members are trained teachers, it is crucial that we have a head teacher like Mr. Singh, as he has already come up with many strategies that we had not thought of. This whole project focuses on girls and women (as soon as possible we will be starting adult literacy classes), and he has plans to involve the mothers of our pupils directly in their education. He plans on using strategies that he has used in the past to great success. One of these is to get the mothers to sit with their children when they do their homework. They may be illiterate and unable to follow what their children are doing, however it is crucial that the whole family be involved in the education process, as it gives the child support, and makes the mother feel involved and valued. Mr. Singh also targets the mothers in terms of parent-teacher conferences. In his last school this plan was met with scepticism from his colleagues, however he achieved a 70% attendance rate of mothers, and visited those who did not attend at their homes. Clearly Mr. Singh is extremely motivated and dedicated, and will have a significant and positive impact on the pupils and their families.

He plans to train the other four teachers to become the best teachers they can be, and we have impressed upon the staff that we want to steer away from the normal Indian school method of simply making children learn by rote and memorise meaningless and arcane mantras from their text books. We are encouraging the asking and answering of questions, and the actual imparting of knowledge to students rather than having them copy endlessly out of textbooks. In terms of books also we have selected these carefully, to weed out stereotypical and demeaning characterisations of women, which are rife in Indian school books, and other awful examples, such as one ABC book which stated: ‘G is for gun’, accompanied by a large picture of a Kalashnikov rifle. One of the main principles of our school is that corporal punishment shall never be used. Again this is a major departure from the Indian norm. For example, one of the classmates of the children we used to teach in Delhi had his leg broken by their teacher.

There will also be a diverse curriculum, starting with the core subjects to begin with but expanding and growing as we develop and can provide more. We want to foster the individual development of each child, and to bring out her strengths, rather than turning out a product.

We have already started the provision of medical care, with doctors’, eye doctors’ and dentists’ visits already arranged. Gopal Singh, the head teacher, was adamant that if the parents paid absolutely nothing towards the project that they would not value it and respect it. This is a general tendency in Indian society, as almost nothing is offered free of cost. We had worried about this before he brought up this concern, so we considered a number of options. In the end we settled on the idea that the tiny, nominal fee should pay for the medical services we are providing. This has a double effect: making the parents feel that they have invested something in their child’s education and make them feel that attendance is extremely important, as well as funding the medical care. The poorest families will not have to pay anything however. Gopal Singh is also a homeopath, and will be running a permanent homeopathic clinic from the school, supplemented by the visits of conventional doctors and dentists.

Updated 24 September 2004

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