India

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The Goal:

Raise $25,500:
sustain Bhatti Mines School for the coming year.

The Model:

YOU
mobilize your community: raise funds for the school.
YOU
go to India to serve the children.

The Impact:

200 children
are fed, educated,
and given an alternative to child labor.
YOU
give yourself
a life-changing experience of authentic service.

The School

Bhatti Mines is one of the most impoverished areas of Delhi: slum-like conditions offer little shelter, no running water, no health services, no schools, and few jobs other than manual labor, which many children begin at a young age to help support their families. Santosh and Archana Singh began teaching the children of Bhatti Mines three years ago out of a deep calling to address the issues of child labor and poverty in their community. Vanessa met the Singh family while serving in India and was moved by their sincerity and devotion to the children of Bhatti Mines; she felt inspired to reach out to the Amala Foundation community to help create alternatives to child labor and a way out of extreme poverty for the community of Bhatti Mines.

What has been accomplished so far:

Thanks to the fundraising efforts of devoted community members over the past year and a half, 200 children formerly engaged in child labor have been educated at the Bhatti Mines School. With these donations:

Four trained teachers were hired to instruct the children in English, Hindi, math, social studies and science. Before, Santosh Singh and his wife Archana taught all of the children as much as they could on their own time, in their own home. Now, 200 children children ages 5 - 16 learn all subjects, attending school from 8am to 1pm each day, and older youth ages 14 - 20 attend vocational classes at the school.

The children drink clean water each day. Before, like most of Bhatti Mines, there was no running water at the school, and no water that was safe for drinking. Now, clean running water is installed in the school.

The children have books, school supplies and clothes. Before, the children had no textbooks from which to study, few school supplies, and with many families surviving below the poverty level, children often lacked clothes in which to attend school. Now, all of the children have books to read, notebooks to write in, clothes and shoes to wear, and the self-respect that comes from being treated with dignity.

Rent and electricity were paid for the school. Before, the Singhs taught the children out of a room of their home. Now rent is paid on an 8 room school building, and the school is open 11 months a year, 6 days a week, from morning to evening. It remains the only school serving the children of Bhatti Mines.

What is needed now to sustain Bhatti Mines School:

The goal of the school is sustainability. In two years, the school will be eligible for government funding. Until that time, your support will enable the school to continue serving the children of Bhatti Mines.

Now 200 children need to eat every day. Many of the children live deep in poverty, eating little and irregularly, lacking the daily nourishment essential to concentrate and learn. It is our intention to raise the funds necessary to feed all 200 children each day. It costs only 20 cents per child per day to offer a full meal, and to make the difference between malnourishment and health, surviving and thriving.

Now 2 more teachers need to be hired. Hiring more teachers will allow more children from Bhatti Mines to attend the school, and will help address the varied needs of the students, many of whom come illiterate and require intensive support. With a total of 8 teachers, all of the students will receive a well-rounded education from kindergarten through high school levels, including the opportunity for vocational training.

$25,500 will sustain the school for the coming year, ensuring that 200 children receive an education, eat every day, drink clean water, have books and clothes, and are given the opportunity to thrive.

The Service

This model of engaged service honors both the fundraising and the hands-on service in India as equally important components of the experience. The goal is solidarity, not charity: to work together to empower not only these children in India ~ to envision a future beyond poverty and illiteracy ~ but also our own communities ~ to make a difference, to impact the issues of child labor and poverty in our global community.

The Service arises not only from our own presence at the school, the projects we engage in and our connection with the children while we are there, but also in our fundraising efforts before the trip: our goal is to raise funds to sustain the school for the coming year, ensuring that 200 children continue to be fed and educated. The cost of running the school for an entire year is $25,500: that is an investment of only $70 a day to put an end to child labor in this community.

The Cost:

Each participant in the Service Retreat will raise $4,000, half of which goes to support the school, and half of which pays for expenses related to the trip, including $900 allocated for airfare. The efforts of ten participants will effectively support the school for the coming year. We also welcome those who cannot join us on the trip but feel moved fundraise to support the children of Bhatti Mines. Click here for a page of Fundraising Resources.

The Retreat:

An essential part of Vanessa’s message is that sustainable peace begins within...and that in order to impact suffering in the world, we must meet and contain it within ourselves. The India Service Retreat is a unique opportunity to deepen our roots in sustainable peace by meeting and containing all that arises within and around us in the face of extreme poverty and hardship while we work with the beautiful children of the Bhatti Mines School.

The Retreat will be an intensive experience in extreme conditions, focused on being with the children at the school for a week, offering ourselves fully. We will stay at an ashram within walking distance of the school, and will share a day at the beginning of the Retreat for arrival and preparation, a day in the middle for rest and deepening, and a day at the end for closure and integration. There will be meetings with Vanessa each day before and after the service, and she will be present to guide and contain the experience of the Retreat from beginning to end.

The Message:

Vanessa speaks about authentic service: service as a spiritual practice and a way of life:

“There is a yearning in all of us: to contribute, to give, to serve. It is part of the human being, it is part of human nature, it is woven within you to want to engage in a service that is going to benefit not only the people you love the most, but The Whole...

Service is spiritual practice. It is a devotional act. The kind of service that really impacts the Whole springs out of a devotion to what has been offered to you as an individual, as a human being…it is a language back to the God of your understanding. It is an invitation for body and mind to engage in this world in a devotional way...to realize Love through your humanity, through this incarnation. It is not what you do, but from where you are moved.

This is about actualizing a life that is based upon serving the Whole. An authentic and true state of living…where our actions, our thoughts, and our relationship to the world is based on how we can contribute, how we as human beings can live in a loving consideration of The Whole.

It takes extreme courage to live this way. It means seeing the Face of God in the face of deep suffering. It means offering our lives every day in service to the Whole.”

Contact:

If you are inspired to attend the India Service Retreat,
if you would like more information about the project,
or if you are moved to fundraise for the school,
please contact us:

Haripriya
512-476-8884
haripriya@amalafoundation.org

CLICK HERE TO WATCH A SLIDESHOW
OF THE BHATTI MINES SCHOOL:

HELP END CHILD LABOR:
GIVE A CHILD AN EDUCATION.

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