"Help us keep our schools running"

- Durga, 7, a night school student, from the salt plains of Rajasthan,  dreams to become a teacher when she grows up.  

 

What is our campaign about? 

For over four decades now, we at Barefoot have run night schools across India for rural children unable to attend any day school due to compelling family responsibilities (e.g. farming, livestock breeding, household chores) or other unavoidable reasons (e.g. distance, social barriers preventing girls from attending school).

 

The night schools cater to children from tribal communities left at the development periphery across Rajasthan, be it the nomadic Bagariyas, the landless Kalbeliya daily wage labourers, the Mal scrap reselllers, or the primitively agricultural Bhils. Education for such ignored communities can be game changing in shifting the development dynamics and has indeed proven to be so, in our case.

 

Since we started in 1974, our solar-powered night schools in remote off-grid rural communities have educated over 75,000 children, 65% of which are girls. We have helped over 40% of our children integrate into state schools. These outstanding stories of our children have contributed to the changing mindset of these communities towards the value of education, much in line with our nation’s commitment to UNESCO’s development goal of ‘Education for All’ by 2030. As we have successfully educated and transitioned rural children across to mainstream education, our night schools have naturally reduced from a peak of 150 to now 30 in Rajasthan.

 

The landscape of funding education has changed significantly over the years, with the focus now on funding digital devices, curriculum support, and other structures. This focus has led to a funding gap for the core of education - support for well-trained teachers.

Evolving with the times, we have revisited and revamped our model of night schools, to turn them into digital study halls that offer the government an effective model of quality education supported by cutting-edge technology that is low-cost and off-grid. 

Having piloted this new model across the country and seen fascinating results on student engagement and learning outcomes, we plan to turn all our night schools into digital learning centres that will also offer gateways for adult literacy, information dissemination and information access for entire communities. 

After years of supporting these 30 night schools ourselves, we have now reached a point where we need your support to keep them running while we work on turning them into digital learning centres.

Our 30 night schools are the only hope for education of the rural children attending them and we need your help to continue supporting these children who do not have any other means to education.

 

We need help to maintain the 30 night schools for 1 academic year only. By then, we expect to achieve an operating and funding model for turning them into sustainable digital centres.

The cost of educating one child is 300 INR per month and 3600 INR for the full academic year.

We would love if you consider sponsoring a child for the full year. This way, you will receive a profile of the child you have sponsored and updates on his or her progress. As a supporter, we feel that it is important that you get to know the fortunate child that you helped take a step towards you!

In the spirit of crowdfunding, every little contribution helps so we are grateful for any amount you can offer to support the children in our night schools.

We also invite you to help raise awareness of our campaign through family and friends so that we can help all the 1200 children across our 30 night schools.

 

 

We have already trained the community teachers in our 30 night schools and provided them with teaching and learning materials.

The funds from this campaign will go towards the core running costs of the night schools – the salary of the teachers, education workers, stationery, cost of educational activities, and administrative costs.

Your contribution shall be further supported by villagers, night school alumni, our organisation and others who are committed to realise the dreams of these children.

I found my passion and commitment towards the cause of child education back in 2011 and a platform to do so in Barefoot College. I was inspired after watching the TED talk by our founder Mr. Bunker Roy and visiting our campus in Tilonia and a nearby night school. To this day, I continue to be inspired by the work that we do and the rural children and communities that we work with.

I look after the education initiatives at Barefoot College, which has been creating leaders out of rural children through education since the 1970s.

There are many barriers to rural children accessing education in India and we have successfully navigated them through a variety of initiatives, with our night schools leading the way. There are constraints of the government where we are trying to fill in, and then there are our constraints, where we are hoping you will fill in.

At Barefoot College, we nurture rural children to become creative, introspective, confident individuals who embrace diversity, are proud of their heritage, and are capable of becoming tomorrow’s changemakers for their communities and global society at large. 

We invite you to join us on our journey of empowering rural children and their communities through our night schools. With your support, we will be able to continue running classes for the children while we work on transforming the night schools to become self sustaining digital learning centers.

- Shuvajit Payne