Educate street children in rural India

It's been 18months since we moved into our brand new building at Snehalaya English Medium School. With the partnership with British Council's connecting classrooms scheme in full force we have undergone some radical changes and we are striving towards education for all.

For us Education for All means just that and actually uniting all children under one roof: HIV positive, slum children (54), orphans (87), mainstream children (49) learning together a remarkable acheivement and one we are proud of. Shoulder to shoulder and mind to mind, these extraordinary children demonstrate, that for all walks of life, education doesn't just give children basic knowledge and skills, it replaces an empty mind with an open mind.

We have fostered an environment where children are content and happy to work happily together and collaborate. Before, destitute children could not access education easily; however S.E.M.S provides a learning environment, where racial and social prejudices are non-existent and future full of hope and ambition prevails. At the beginning of this academic school year, we opened our doors for the first time to paying mainstream children. Teachers, volunteers and project leaders have been leading a ground breaking campaign to raise awareness for the importance of education. They have taken to the streets going door to door and talking to parents across seven different slum communities asking questions and encouraging a debate over the importance of education. This has resulted in subscription of a brilliant mix of children from different economic, social and health backgrounds to unite in our school.

Ajam, a 14 year old boy from Kashmir, is just one of the hundreds of children benefiting from Snehalaya's education program and being supported through the generousity of supporters like yourself. After being orphaned in Kashmir, he was directed to Snehalaya in January by a government organisation. Ajam was one of a group of 5 boys that were homed in Snehalaya's long term shelter known as the 'rehabilitation centre'.

Intially shy, Ajam didn't often contribute in lessons, care workers and teachers were concerned he would not be able to access the school work through the English medium. However as the weeks and months passed, teachers continued to support him and slowly Ajam found a new sense of confidence, he began to make new friends. He is really been welcomed and accepted by all members of the loving community at Snehalaya at a difficult point in his young life. Now, just 6 months on Ajam is flying high, he is one of the highest achieving students in the 5th standard class, and his command of the English language is something to admire. What a super-star, only two weeks ago he was proud to tell everyone about his 19/20 pass mark in an English vocabulary test! Good luck Ajam with your future studies.

In addition to learning success, continued professional development (CPD) has been a key theme of the Connecting Classrooms project in place with British Council and Welland Park Academy in Leicester.  With links to other schools in the region and further afield in England, sharing good practise has resulted in many new ideas being implemented and monitored. Each subject in the school now has a specific classroom dedicated to that subject and teachers that are specialised in certain areas of the curriculum are teaching their specialism. A huge behaviour and classroom management initiative has been launched, and this is having positive ongoing effects.  Bearing in mind when we opened the school behavioural disruption was a serious issue, we are making great progress.

We have continued to strengthen and develop links with Cathedral & John Connon Infant School, Welland Park Academy, Toybank and Leeds Rag & Leeds Beckett. The continuous support of these institutions put us on the front line with international links in our City. Looking forward to the future, we have our third teacher visit to Welland Park Academy in the winter term and many mentoring opportunities from local schools. Watch this space as Snehalaya English Medium School continues to be a lead in education for under privileged children.

Thank you for your ongoing support.  We hope you feel it is being spent well and we welcome your comments and suggestions. Please think about making a regular donation to this or one of our other 3 other projects.  Even a small regular donation of just £5 a month means over the year you will cover a qualified teachers salary for an entire month.

£5/month to EDUCATE the next generation 

£5/month to RESCUE a child from bonded labour

£5/month to offer FARM training and living for a family with HIV

£5/month to run ADOPTION rescue facilities for abandoned infants

Thank you!

Sarah Kenning,

Language Teacher - Welland Park Academy, Leiceister UK

Past International Volunteer 2009

Mentor and participating lead teacher in the Connecting Classrooms Scheme with The British Council 2013, 2014, 2015

Links:

• Video: International students get behind Snehalaya

When our Snehalaya English Medium School formed in 2010 to get our slum children and children from our long term care centre simply into ANY form of primary education, we didn't know how things would shape up, we didn't even have a school building or more then one teacher.  

Now four years on we are redefiining our goals and believe The Power of Play is vital to our children’s development harnessing their resiliance into empowerment and allowing their potential to be leaders for social change to emerge.  

We are so grateful to be connected to four amazing educational institutions here in Maharashtra and in the UK and partnered with two great charities.  We also have numerous kind benefactors offering donations in kind to build our resource library.  We have not only proved we just may be able to offer a brighter future for our children, but that this is something we could even strive at.  Thank you for staying with us in these formative years.

This year a great many partnerships were formed:

 -Over 3500 books were added to our library from Cathedral & John Connon Infant School, Mumbai & Give A Little Shop, UK and The Idea Foundation, Pune.

  -Wellandpark Academy, UK secured a third year of British Council ‘Connecting Classrooms’ funding allowing both UK and our our teachers to run exchange programmes with great opportunities for our teachers & children to learn about their cultural, economic differences along with realizing the similarities children share. 

-Toybank is an amazing charity in Mumbai that believes play can give back the right to childhood and we are thrilled to be involved in implementing a toy library for our 6 slum districts and at our school. In our communities were possession discipline is low and toys are in their scarcity this invigilated toy library is such an egalitarian and sustainable approach to gifting children what we all remember most from our own. The abandonment and exploration of play!

 -Leeds Rag (Raise & Give Society) not only raised a substantial donation to be used across our education projects, their group of 12 volunteers who visited for 2 weeks in March ran excellent workshops with our school creating beautiful solar system posters titled ‘You Are A Child of The Universe’ a thing of powerful resonance and beauty making our children feel included and counted.

Thank you for your on going support.  We hope you feel it is being spent well and we welcome your comments and suggestions.  Please feel free to Kathleen Smith: give@snehalaya.org

Please think about making a regular donation to this or one of our other 3 other projects.  Even a small regular donation of just £5 a month means over the year you will cover a qualified teachers salary for an entire month.

FARM, ADOPT, EDUCATE, RESCUE

Links:

• Snehalaya School (before we got our New School Building)