Ongoing Projects

With COVID breaking out in India in unprecedented numbers, 73 of the 78 children’s families lost their source of income and many children have lost family members as well as friends in the community. In the midst of this, Golden Avatar has had to start thinking differently about how we can help the community.

The centrepiece of this has been the school’s land in Srirampur, just outside the main city area, 15 minutes walk from Dalia and Banti’s house. We have been able to build an assembly hall, an outdoor toilet, a guest house and a large kitchen on the land in the past 12-18 months. We currently operate out of a mixture of the new land and the house of Dalia and Banti so we are looking to build a school building on the new land to enable the land to be used full time. The land is also being cultivated to produce crops and the school has also been receiving rice from nearby families to support feeding the children.

The school is now very much entrenched as a pillar of the community and we have been using donations to feed the families in the wider area who can’t afford food as well as supplying drinking water to the community during the recent July flood.

Whilst there is a need for us to fundraise to cover day to day expenses, we are also looking to take the school to the next level and as part of this we have half an acre of land which has been made ready for construction. We are also looking to move forward with several projects, such as:

Daily Meals

Due to supply chain issues caused by COVID, the school’s grocery budget has increased to 45,000 INR per month - to feed 78 children a hot meal each day. This is about a 20-25% increase from previously. At the moment the children are much more reliant on our hot meals as well as many of the children’s parents are out of employment. We are also looking to provide a second meal daily to the children which would allow us to keep all the children at Golden Avatar from sunrise to sunset (as opposed to 4 hours at the moment) which would allow the children to fully engage in what we do without interference from the outside world.

Work Opportunities

We have also started to employ former students as teachers for the lower grades, we refer to them as student teachers as they are studying their junior college education whilst teaching at the Gurukula. We have found that they have been able to form strong connections to the younger students and strongly embody the Gurukula’s values to the wider community. The salary for each student teacher is 3,000 INR per month (~$40 USD).

Farming

We are cultivating our land to produce food for feeding to the children. This involves equipment, labour and seeds for the produce. The ploughing is almost finished and we are planting our first crop.

School Building

We are currently looking for donors to be able to build a school building on the land as well as a community centre which we can use to house guests (from overseas) and provide employment to the families connected to the school, including the children when they graduate.

Help Us Light Up Their World

Please feel free to share these initiatives with anyone you know and let us know you are able to help and please feel free to touch base with me if you feel there is any way you can assist.

Social Media

As part of the vocational training, the children have taken over responsibility of creating and posting videos on social media. Please check out our Youtube channel by clicking on below icon and don’t forget to like and subscribe to our videos.