Sunday 16 September 2012

The School

Another hectic day.

We met with the mothers of our sponsored children early this morning.It was pretty clear from the onset that there are conflict of interests here.Many of the children are living in very difficult home conditions...To help mum to sell vegetables or not, and before or /and after school ? which would mean missing the English language class. These are real dilemmas facing the children

Through Uma, I explained to the mums  the difficulties we face as a very small charity with limited resources. With so much unmet need in the school, the charity needs to maximise the resources we have. I fully understand that they have different priorities, and respect the choices they have to make on a day to day However, it would mean that the charity would want to move the resources to sponsoring another new child on our waiting list.The mums listened and appreciated  the time that we gave them to look at the issue. We will review the attendance in March 2013

At the  same time, we met the 3 new children whom  we have sponsored recently. It transpired that everyone of them is living. in dire home conditions .These children are coming to school hungry. To cut a long story short, I horse traded with Uma's son who is sponsoring 2 of them, in return I paid up front approximately 55 sterling  for the 3 girls to have breakfast in school from now until April 2013.\There are many more children in the same plight. But like John says, I cannot save the world. I can only do my best within the resources available to me....

However,.I did a quick calculation. Based on the number of sponsors, Friends and donors we have, it would not be difficult to raise fifteen hundred sterling to provide 50 daily  breakfasts for a year. This is the most cost effective way to feed the children , rather than setting up a stand alone breakfast club. One breakfast  costs 15 rupees a day( 11 pence approx). She will have an egg 3 x a week,plus fillers like rice, bread,noodles or rice flakes.. All this are being done in collaboration with  the school canteen

The new desks and computers are being ordered.I had to make it clear to the school that they are bought for the pupils. I would not expect the admin staff to start using the computers earmarked for the computer lab. I was quite adamant that the school must pay for their staff, and not start removing the odd one or two to the staff room. Otherwise there will be repercussions. The poor computer teacher who is fighting a losing battle on this front, was grateful for my intervention. So we shall see. Uma will pop into the school from time to time, just to supervise.things in general

I hope to update events in the following days. Maybe Uma and I need to slow down a bit. We are no spring chicken, I keep reminding ourselves :)

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