Give 400 needy children & youths a future in India

Although the corona pandemic in India is still having massive effects and thus also our activities are severely impacted, we have achieved two very positive results in the last few weeks:

1. We were granted a license from the Indian Government to run an “inclusive school”, means a special school where children with and without disabilities learn together. This is the first license for an inclusive school granted to an organization in the Sonbhadra district. We are very proud of this. We now, of course, very much hope that we can start running the school as soon as the Corona situation allows. The breakthrough came in a conversation with Dr Ajaya Kumar, Government Representative for Special Disability Education. We have already collected data from over 120 families in the area close to our center where people with disabilities live. We will offer our classes over time to nursery, pre-school and class I-V. The quality of our Infrasturcture and our lessons are comparable to private schools. However, children from BPL (Below-Poverty-Line) families are free of charge, other children have to pay a very small fee. So this is a great opportunity for children to benefit from an education they would never get in a public school, if they go to school at all.

2. We will purchase a piece of land opposite from our Keshwa Child Welfare Center. We need this property as a playground and sports field for the school and want to keep the option open to possibly build a small additional building at a later date. The plot has a size of approx. 6,800 sqft.

The press reports every now and then about our intention to run an inclusion school. The registration phase for the Inclusive School has started.

As the numbers of infections across India are still very high, we currently only can offer our services to people in the villages. From time to time we are allowed to make some small events in our Center, like on Independence Day with a limited number of children. The same applies to the other programs. We are currently not allowed to run our “Skill Development Program” and other programs.  We do not assume that approval will be given before November 2020. 

Keep your fingers crossed for us that we will be able to offer all our programs for the benefit of children and women again by next year at the latest.