Rainbow Primary School

This little boy is transitioning in from work to school. He was a laborer. He joined us just last week. His parents are making a big sacrifice sending him to school. Looks like our no fees - no associated costs (uniforms, stationairy/slates, books) model is working. Look at that grin, those teeth! Seeing kids go to school, not work, is what it is all about.

This is a pair of current students, plus a new one, the young man on the right. He was recruited this morning, and we are sending his brother, 9th standard, to our sister school a ways down the street. We had an amazing morning, going hut-to-hut. This is my absolute favorite part of the job. We talked about the new headmistress, the new school building, and summer school (starts Tuesday). But let me say a thing or two about Friday night. I met my first politician, a Member of the Legislative Assembly, Mr. Reddy. This man is the city-wide voice of the Telegu laborers and hut-dwellers. You'd think this would be a great meeting, right? I'm working to build a government school for a great number of children of laborers, so no worries. Well... There was a misunderstanding. The bureaucrat working on land issues was told by our wonderful big poobah bureaucrat (who has truly saved this project) to get us more land. We need an assembly area and a preschool. The land next d...

Today is the big day!!! The government released funding for our school! Almost $13,000 dollars were awared for construction two floors, four classrooms. This is a public-private partnership, so the private funders (which will be a combination of the student's parents, other private individuals, and foundations) will fnd the remaining floor, which will include the staff rooms and assembly areas. All KIND of goodies are planned, but I want those to be a surprise. Who are these handsome devils? The one of the left is the senior bureaucrat in charge of releasing funding for all buildings in the district (education/government, etc.). The one on the right is the senior engineer who will approve our architectural plans, etc. We have the land, the funding, the architect, and the builder. AND most important part is our big sister organization, the Naandi Foundation (www.naandi.org) whose staff have vast experience with over a thousand schools in India. They will support this entire ...

Here is our other staffer drawing water from our well, which we are so ready to replace. School is almost over! I have the exams in hand. They are extremely creative, of course. The teachers use visuals, ryhmes, matching, and fill-in-the-blank stories instead of the usual "Write three words that start with A." Class Four exams cracked me up with the inadvertant references to the American SAT tests with a fill in the opposites section (Telegu vocablulary exam), Happy:____ (and) ____: Night. On a more lighthearted note, they were required to write a paragraph (grammer and telegu vocabulary exam) on "What is your favorite toy or game?" General knowledge questions were like "Gandhi's birthday is celebrated in the ____ month," and "Nrimal Town is in the ____ district in Andhra Pradesh." For math, 4th standard is working on adding hundreds in columns of three, and multiplication of hundreds by single digits (i.e. 425 x 3 = ?), and division of te...

The school was the site of polio vaccinations for the whole neighborhood, part of a nation-wide campaign! Very exciting! Nurses scurring in and out directing our teachers, our teachers administering vaccines, all kinds of craziness. Sunitha, Divya, Neha, and Laxmi went hut to hut and won a 90% success rate for vaccinating the target population (some children were out of town). A total thrill for me was giving a few vaccinations. On the left is NAGA, the fearless! Our little mascot is safe from polio. Here is Aliya, our special needs student, with his beautiful mommy. An aside here: I have to say, this mommy is amazing. She warms up Aliya's water for his bath, using a bit of the precious little gas allotted to her through a ration card, just to make sure his wee-sized body doesn't get the chills. But back to the vaccination day: During all this chaos, we may have found a partner for the eggs and milk plans. We just happened to run across a group who exclusively gathers...

This is our friendly, upper management person with the government (seated). She is in charge of personnel and cirriculum for the entire district. Our little area, called a mandal, is hardly on the map but she has taken a shine to our efforts. There is a neighboring school which is also laboring to build private-public partnerships to create a model upper primary school. That school's non-profit partner, Mr. Kumar (not pictured), and Kalpana (right) usually team up to attract her attention. Last Wednesday, we have met with this lovely lady, her boss, her colleague in charge of facilities, and .... YES, we saw my favorite file clerk! Srinivas! He was still there! I didn't see any papers stacked up, so he must be working hard. You go, Srinivas! The result of all these meeting was a promise to change the headmistress of our school, funding for about half the new school building, and a possible addition of 40 square yards to the existing plot. I was whoo-hooing in the car on t...

From the very start, the school was meant to attract special needs children. Along with child laborers, it was my dearest wish to use the school as a means to find these children. Special needs children give so much to those of us who have the chance to work with them. Ensuring they are medically attended to, educated to their abilities, loved, and cherished was a primary goal for me in developing this "model" school. It just would not be a model school unless capacity was built in to include all children. Here is Aliya, four years old. He is living with cerebral palsy. Dr. Arati and I spotted him during one of the long mornings working with the students' various ailments. Aliya's mother was lovingly giving him a good, soapy scrub down during the usual bathtimes (10:30 AM, when the water is running). He clearly had CP. Aliya had no control of his limbs or head, and had difficulty extending his legs. He was also very thin. Since we could see right away his ...

The police here in India are a tricky bunch. My friends tell me to carry 100 rs at all times in case a policeman stops us. (There no policewomen on the streets, but they do exist.) Usually the case is there are very corrupt departments in the central city office, like any big U.S. city, along with various corrupt sub-stations (covering about 5 square miles). We happen to be in a great sub-station. The Police Inspector for Madhapur is a good friend of my do-gooder buddies here in Hyderabad. He recently promised crosswalks for the school! However, the school straddles the line between Madhapur and Jubilee Hills and the neighborhood has a different relationship with the sub-station for Jubilee Hills. Not that is it the Police Inspector’s fault, but the Jubilee Hills police were the ones called to tear down the huts on December 29, 2005 (see earlier blog post) by the Housing and Urban Development Association (HUDA). You can imagine how the neighborhood feels about this. So the PI f...