June 2012 - Project Mala

25 Church Lane
Nether Poppleton
York YO26 6LF
Telephone : 01904 786880
E-mail : [email protected]
Website : www.projectmala.org.uk
Mala
News
Patrons:
The Maharaja of Benares
Felicity Kendal CBE
Sir Mark Tully OBE
Lady Young
Madeline Weinrib
Obeetee Pvt Ltd
Issue 27 : June 2012
An action programme for the elimination of child labour in the hand knotted carpet industry India
Simple mistake costs Ravi his place at Navodaya
Everyone was ecstatic when two of our children won places in the Navodaya school for
gifted children. Imagine the disappointment when Ravi was told that an error on his
application meant that his offer was withdrawn.
He had said he was a scheduled caste child, but when this was checked, it was found
he was a member of the scheduled tribe. Even more painful is that scheduled tribe is
lower than scheduled caste and it would have been easier for him to get in, but all the
places had been filled.
The school put forward all the children who they think
may have a chance and fill in all the application forms,
but as there are a lot of applications to fill in, the teachers do not have time to check every detail.
Tarannum has taken her place at Navodaya but as this is
the first time she has ever been away from her family,
she is quite home sick. Her mother and father are visiting her regularly to keep her spirits up.
Pre-school for girls
Some years ago staff began testing all children who wanted to join our Primary
School. The main reason for this was that some of the children had such a poor command of their native language that it was very difficult to teach them.
Having such a test showed up a marked difference in ability between boys and girls and
it became difficult to get the 50% boy/girl ratio that we wanted. From this year,
therefore, we have established a trial Pre-School for girls at our Turkahan School. If
it works, then, finance permitting, we will extend it to our other schools, which would
mean that girls should have the same opportunities as boys.
Sanjay wins school race
Sponsors trip
In the last few years we have tried to
develop any talents a child has. Not all
are academic and some excel in other
ways. Sport is always high on the list and
we hold many inter-school sports competitions. Note that he runs in bare feet!
Two years ago a number of sponsors made
a holiday trip to India and combined it
with a visit to the opening of a new Project Mala School.
We are thinking
of organizing a similar event in February
2013 for the inauguration of the new
Secondary School buildings.
If
you
are
interested
in going,
please let
us know.
Virendra finds water
Dush raises over £1,000 for Mala
Dush Patel and his family have been sponsoring a child with Project Mala since
March 2011. Dush takes a keen interest
in our work in India and
decided he would like to do
more to help the project.
He decided to raise some
money for us by running in
the 2012 Comrades Ultra
Marathon in South Africa.
The race from Pietermarartzberg to Durban is over 56 miles ((89 km) and attracts
18,000 competitors.
Dush set himself a training programme
that covered over 750 miles in his preparation for this event. You can see more
photographs of Dush on our website.
Dush covered the 56
mile (89km) in just
11hr and 10 minutes
and has raised over
£1,000.
In the part of rural India that Project
Mala works, a number
of essential items we
all take for granted in
the west are not
available.
One such
item is running water. All of our schools
rely upon hand pumps,
but finding water for
the hand pumps is a
problem.
It has been particularly difficult to find
water at Turkahan School where two
wells have been dry. When the drilling
engineers had no more suggestions, up
stepped Virendra, who, using a coconut as
a water diviner, detected
water and sure
enough at 300
ft down water
came gushing
out.