Selected school in India

Childwellness vzw

PROJECTS > education > schools

SCHOOL 1

Vivekananda Residential Tribal School (Vidyalaya, Wayanad District, Kerala, India)

The school has approximately 250 children, and it specifically works with tribal children. Most of them are orphans: they've lost their father and/or mother and therefore live permanently at school.
Tribals are a very vulnerable groups of people in India because they don't belong to any caste. Moreover they are also economically extremely vulnerable because they can no longer live in their natural surroundings: their forest has become a National Reserve.

The children receive an education, a uniform, and 3 meals a day. One child in this school costs 10 Euro/month with everything included (8.93 GBP or 14.92 USD; currency of November 14, 2009).

Presently, the most important need of this school is a dormitory with 150 beds for the boys. Childwellness hopes to sponsor this dormitory as much as possible.

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this school.

SCHOOL 2

Bharathamatha Nursery and Primary school (Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India)

The school has approximately 120 children and is managed by the Suyam Charitable Trust. They specifically work with children of road workers. These people have no fixed residence and move regularly, due to the demands of their job. Most of the children are interned in order to receive regular education.
At this school, attention is placed on giving warmth in order to create a positive mental development of the child.

Currently, the school is now (re)building additional classrooms.

One child at this school costs 5 Euro/month with everything included (4.47 GBP or 7.46 USD; currency of November 14, 2009). Childwellness gladly wants to contribute to these costs.

Suyam Charitable Trust also manages another school in Chennai (Siragu Montessori School) with 337 children.
This school has already been sponsored by Rose vzw: they payed for a bio gas plant for the kitchen and for a science classroom. One child in this school costs 10 Euro/month.

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this school.

SCHOOLS REGION KALIMPONG

Approximately 80% of the population in and around Kalimpong is of Nepalese origin. In this discriminated region the need for strong education is very high. For this reason Mondo Challenge Foundation, a British NGO, is trying to solve this problem by organizing different local school projects. At present they support several primary schools in the Kalimpong area (and some other schools in the Darjeeling region, west of Kalimpong).

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these schools.

Childwellness wants to help Mondo Challenge Foundation. Therefore we selected the following projects for financial support:

New Rise Academy (Kashyem, Kalimpong, West Bengal, India)

Mondo Challenge Foundation started the construction work of a new primary school building in the end of 2008.
Childwellness decided to finance the last phase of this construction work. This meant finishing the outside and the inside of the building: making the walls impermeable, purchasing chalkboards, extra banks, ...
Only 7 months after laying the foundational stone, the children celebrated the inauguration of their new school building in June 2009 !

starting the construction (December 2008)

children in their new class room (June 2009)

See the progress of this
construction project.

In the near future, Childwellness would like to collect money for the construction of the very first secondary school. That way we can provide older students in the surrounding villages a chance to continue their education. Most of the other secondary schools are very remote and therefore rather difficult to reach.
The new class rooms of this future secondary school are to be built on top of the new primary school as shown in the picture below:

future construction project (secondary school)

planning new class rooms of the secondary school

Lotus Academy (Pedong, Kalimpong, West-Bengalen, India)

In 2006, Martine De Lie, staff member of Childwellness vzw and teacher in Gitok (Kalmthout-Belgium) was sent by Mondo Challenge to act as a volunteer teacher to give lessons at the elementary school Lotus Academy for a duration of two months. This gave her the opportunity to closely experience the needs of the local community in addition to those of the school.
During her stay, an amount of money was given by Gitok towards the construction of a few new classrooms. Even after her departure she remained in contact with Mondo Challenge Foundation and saw to it, via the collaboration with Childwellness vzw, that this school has the chance for further support.

Because the children from the Lotus Academy come from extremely poor families, it is often impossible for the parents to raise the requested school money all on their own. Mondo Challenge Foundation pays half of this amount so that more children can be admitted to the educational program. In addition, the school receives annually an amount of money to cover a portion of the administrative and operational costs.
In 2009, Childwellness vzw decided to take over part of these expenses accrued by Mondo Challenge Foundation. Childwellness hopes to continue to do so in the future if needed.

from 17 up to nearly 200 students in a period of 10 years.

new class rooms in brick instead of wood

students in their new class room