Christel House

I think I wrote before that I was going to visit the school that I found through the daughter of the doctor I had lunch with. Well I visited last Thursday and it was fantastic!! It's called Christel House, after Christel Dehann (I think I spelt the secong name wrong) who set it up in 2001. They work with kids from the slum and deprived areas and aim to break the poverty cycle.

The only criteria for entry to the school is that you're parents must earn under 2500 rupees per month (someone told me they though it was per year but I think that's probable not true) which is equivalent to just over 30 pounds, and they should have siblings (the more siblings, the higher the chance of getting in, particulary if you aldready have a sibling at the school). At the moment they have girls and boys up to 8th standard, and each year they add a year group until yr12 when they graduate.

Because these students haven't had any education previously, and neither have their parents, it's hard work. They cant set the kind of homework you get in other schools because not only can the parents not help them, but they have to do it before 6pm when the sun sets because most the houses (slums) have no lighting. The kids are doing really well though, by standard 2 they all speak really quite good English and most of the lessons are taught in English. However if some of the children fall behind it's difficult, because there are 40 kids per class the teacher cant do one-to-one and the parents cant help. This is where the volunteers come in, they teach remedial maths and english classes to small groups of struggling kids who are taken out of their lessons for this purpose. The volunteers also help the kids with their reading and in some of the classes they have particular interest in (eg music, art, PE, IT) but they are not teachers.

The school not only provides for the educational needs of the kids but through working with dieticians they offer a full balanced diet. The kids get breakfast, juice at break and a large lunch, this covers 82% of their dietry requirements and means that if they don't eat at home, they are still healthy.

I start there on Monday!!

If anyone is interested in donating to Christel House, which has schools in many other developing countries as well, or learning more about it, the website is www.christelhouse.org I'd like to point out that Christel Dehann pays for all the admin and staff wages, so every penny of donation does actually go to the children.