Jun 17, 2016
last flowers #pudung #lastflowers #radiohead #kribowan
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last flowers #pudung #lastflowers #radiohead #kribowan
The School & Kids.
The convent in Pudung keeps around 60 kids in their hostel & 120 in total, ranging from ages 3 to 15 or 16. The school in the convent only provides classes up to class 4 but gives the facility of keeping some older girls who attend the local highschool.
The majority of kids who go here are BPL (Below Poverty Line) with only a fraction APL (Above Poverty Line). Very few of the parents can afford to pay school fees & so instead give what little they can in money form, food, manual work or help in other ways in exchange for their kid attending school. Many of the families are immigrant families who have crossed the Indian border illegally from more unstable states like Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar etc. not being citizens they are deprived the little help the Indian government does offer the lower classes in society.
A huge portion of the kids come from stone breakers families, working down at the river; digging up, smashing & sieving rocks all day earning next to nothing. The Nuns tell us that some of the kids are made get up early to work stone-breaking before before school starts at 9 in the morning or they're taken out of school a few days at a time some weeks to work down at the river. These are kids of 8, 9 & 10. Some families have barely enough money to eat, with kids being sent to the school with no breakfast or lunch.
Pudung.
Our weekdays are now spent in Pudung teaching, working & playing with the kids. Daniel has taken up teaching English lessons & Declan Maths. We're working with class 4 (10 - 12 year olds) & class 3 (7 - 9 year olds).
We teach each class for an hour in the morning then we do an arts & crafts class with them after. Later after lunch break we spend an hour & a half working in the gardens planting/weeding/digging/giving a hand with the animals or helping in the kitchen.
We then supervise over a study class with the kids who stay full-time at the school, giving one-to-one help is showing really great improvement in the kids! And in the evening we watch over their recreation time, playing games & listening to them sing songs & dance. Or if you bring your camera they're content with taking pictures of themselves for an hour...