The initial roots for the school and its children date back five years.
Mrs. Anuradha Bhonsle (Bhon-sleigh) graduated from the Tata School of Social Sciences and decided to educate children living in the slums of Kolhapur, 200 miles south of Bombay (Mumbai). She found that the children could not come to a school because they had to work during the day to supplement the parent’s income. So, she decided to go to them.
She started teaching them the in the slums under lampposts. She could barely manage to keep them for two hours because they were exhausted after a whole day’s work. Gradually, with the help of friends she acquired a rental room with a yard and expanded the school by rescuing children from enforced labor. She has close to 40 children now.
Most of the children are orphans, some are abandoned and a few have their parents who have agreed to send their children to this residential school. They are not happy because the child’s income is lost but they agreed to make the sacrifice. Until this January, Anuradha ran this school with donations from friends and well-wishers which barely covered the expenses of feeding and housing the children in the one room. The volunteer teachers and helpers got 5 or 10 dollars a month when she could afford it. Yet they all worked with dedication.
We have been able to raise $86,000 to-date and have used part of that sum to pay for the 5 acres of land in Kolampur, India where a new school will be erected. Read more about the vision of the Gandhi Memorial School.
