Save a School with Ashwini Charitable Trust (ACT)

For the months April-June 2015, Ashwini Charitable Trust (ACT) has taken up construction of a unit comprising of a Kitchen & Store room cum a Watchman’s room at the Government Tamil Higher and Primary School, Murphy Town, which we have adopted. Our aim in constructing this unit is to clear up classrooms, which are currently being used as kitchen and storage spaces for old furniture. Once these rooms are clear, we want to use them as a science lab and school library.  

ACT ACTIVITIES:

• The large grounds all around the school have been cleaned and the mud and rubble that were cleared have been used on one side of the ground as an embankment where we plan to plant some flowering plants adjacent to the ancient rain tree. The ground which was flattened using a JCB and a Road roller is being used by ACT collaborators ‘Ultimate Frisbee’, an NGO, which coaches the school and ACT children the game of Ultimate Frisbee, a team game which promotes confidence, camaraderie and team spirit in the children.
• The new unit which ACT is getting built will serve multiple purposes. While it will be used as a kitchen for heating milk and making porridge from the healthy protein-jaggery mix provided by ACT for the school children every day when they come to school every morning. In the afternoons, the government provided mid-day meals will be kept in the new clean kitchen and served to the children.
•   The bricks used to build the new unit have all been manufactured on site from eco-friendly materials and are much cheaper than the bricks available in the market.
• Apart from sprucing up the school grounds, ACT has planted saplings of fruit and flowering trees throughout the year. A hibiscus hedged garden is also being maintained by us, with a few papaya and neem trees in the middle, with the help of a gardener.
• In the beginning of April, ACT distributed floaters/sandals to all the children of the school.
• April and May are months when the school is closed for summer vacations, hence there was no volunteering activity during these months.
• The school reopened on 1^st June, and ACT volunteers are back to assist the teachers and students with their academic work, especially in English.
• ACT is happy to report that the school strength has increased by about 25%, and our aim is to make the school infrastructure so good that more and more children from the surrounding slums come to school.