Worldwide Community Schools

In Hyderabad, India we visited a school that was so much in need I felt like weeping. The school serves the children of beggars. Many of the children do not have enough to eat but the school can’t afford to feed them, nor does it have space to do so. The school gets absolutely no financial aid from the government because of the restrictions that would then be placed on their ethics-based teaching.

The people of Beggar’s Valley often have jobs that bring in a very small amount of money each day. Sometimes their job is begging. Some of the women begin their job of sweeping the streets late at night after the traffic has lessened.

We saw 50 children in a tiny classroom, about the size of an office in the U.S., squeezed onto benches with no desk tops in front of them. Even little grade one children were writing on books held on their laps. The children in this school were impressively neat in their school uniforms. The girls had heavy, shiny black braids tied with black ribbons. The children sat so close together on metal benches that they could hardly move freely.

Most of the teaching was done with work-book type books. The instruction was rote with the teacher saying a line and all of the children repeating it. When the teacher asked a question the children answered in unison. Many of the teachers have a limited amount of education because there aren’t funds to pay the salaries of certified teachers. Because there were no desks, the children held their notebooks on their laps and wrote that way. In spite of the conditions, their writing was almost perfect.

In spite of the teaching and learning circumstances, the children score well on the exams given by the government. The exams measure the content of what the students have memorized rather than expecting the children to use that content to think in a new way.

The teachers and school leaders are eager to learn about sustainability, but by sustainability they simply mean the answer to: how can we keep this school in existence? How can we pay for food for our children? Answering those questions is so extremely difficult, and we know that no one from the West can answer them.

Gloria Stronks

We just finished a visit to a school for impoverished children in Bangalore. Over 600 children are taught in this slum school. Many of the girls gave us hand-picked flowers and the 8th graders had made badges for us of ribbon and paper. As we toured the classes, the children looked to us so expectantly, like there was something really great that we would say to them that will change their lives. We stood there so helplessly, knowing we are so ordinary.

A few of the children had asked their principal if they could share their stories with us. They held back tears as they told us of their terrible family life. Their father is an alcoholic who beats them and their mother all the time. They rarely have any food and their father locks them out of the house so that they have to study under a street light and do not get any rest. Still they come to school. School is the only safe place in their life. I think if not for the devotion they feel for their ill mother, they would run away. But I can see in their eyes that they worry for their mother.

The little girl works as a house maid after schools is finished in order to provide food for the family. Her little brothers also work. They are 11, 12 and 13 years old. They said their father often takes the money they earn and spends it on alcohol.

The principal told us that if we would just listen to their stories, it would help to lift their burden. Another boy of about 12 told us a similar story. He wants to be a preacher when he graduates from school, but first he has to survive his childhood.

We did our best to encourage these children. We told them not to give up. We told them we hoped their father would be convicted of his wrong-doing and know love and peace so that his behavior would change. We secretly wished we could rescue them.

These are the stories of children who attend schools throughout India. For many children, were it not for their school, they would not be fed a healthy meal, they would not receive encouragement and praise, they would never learn to read. Hundreds of thousands of children still wait for schools in India.

If you help to build a school in India, you will truly help to write happy endings for children such as these. WCS needs your help in India to help more children. You CAN do something to help ease their suffering.

-Gypsy Meadows, WCS