Nav-Jeevan

Newsletter August 2020

Exams

Again all the candidates for the high school exams and the Junior College Exams of Dr. T.S. Wilkinson memorial High School and Junior College are graduated. Congrats to all of you. And a big compliment to the teachers.

Graduated for class 12 Junior College

Isha Dhurve

Varsha Parte

Yash Khobragde

Simran Shrivas

Geeta Doifode

Neha Bokde

Prerna Dongre

Rani Gerigosai

Rupali Yenurkar

Seeta Doifode

Yogita Satnami

Graduated for class 10 High School

Aman Rane

Ashish Korram

Ayush Delikar

Divya Boyar

Dorthy Nayak

Garav Kakde

Khushboo Kapse

Lucky Kapse

Pallavi Rahate

Samyak Telang

Sejal Shrivas

Uday Shete

Vicky Raut

Vishal Hadge

Abhishek Bhimte

Aryan Tiwari

Bhagyashree Bante

Krishna Dhotre

Madhuri Mishra

Rohit Dhotre

Yamini Nile

Down below a report from Aneeta Patel about the coronavirus in India and at the school.

By Aneeta Patel

As you probably know, India has the third highest number of Covid-19 cases in the world and similarly the third highest number of deaths. But testing in our country is pitifully low and the numbers may be far higher. All the metro cities are severely affected with Mumbai and Pune being the two worst hit. Nagpur too has been affected though comparatively less than the rest of India.

In the month of March the news of Covid started gaining ground in Nagpur. We were contacted by the Tribal Department and told to send the tribal students, who live in the hostel, home. We were told to contact their parents and if for whatever reason the parent was not able to come to collect their ward then it was the school's responsibility to ensure that the children reach their homes safely even if they are from the deepest tiger infested jungles of Maharashtra. Accordingly we asked our teachers to reach the children home in our school buses in the middle of March.

Then suddenly a complete lockdown was announced on March 22nd. The lockdown was stringent. No one was allowed to leave their homes except to purchase either medicines or food and you had to provide proof of either. This lockdown continued till the end of May. In June there was partial easing of the lockdown but with many restrictions. Inter district travel by private cars was banned except with special police permission and travellers were quarantined for 14 days on reaching their destination. There was no public transport - no trains, buses or air travel.

The worst hit were migrant workers. As you may know a lot of people from remote villages come to cities for work. With the lockdown businesses were completely shut and these labourers who often are paid on a daily basis were suddenly without earnings. They also had no way of returning to their distant homes. Since there was no public transport these poor people started trekking to reach their homes carrying whatever meagre possessions they were able to carry. It was a bleak situation - often their homes were thousands of miles away.

They walked untiringly carrying often their small children. Numerous numbers died and route out of exhaustion and dehydration. April, May and June is the height of summer in India. Temperatures are upward of 110 deg F. Because of the lockdown the small eateries which usually line the highways were shut down so migrants had to survive on whatever food they could carry or else starve to death. It was the most heart wrenching situation. The Government had not given any prior indication that a lockdown was imminent. Ideally they should have given a lead time of a few days before imposing it so that everyone could have reached wherever they would be safest. It was very cruel and inhuman.

Even in Nav-Jeevan we were faced with a similar situation. We have about 18/19 young girls who come from villages in Madhya Pradesh, which is a neighbouring state, to work in our school. They help in caring for our children, cleaning, cooking and washing. Normally they go home for their annual holidays in the month of May. This year of course this was not possible. But their situation was better than that of other migrant workers. Since they lived in the school they were assured of their three meals a day and a comfortable bed. About 15 children too were stranded in the school. These include the orphans which our school looks after as well as children from other states whose parents could not come to collect them.

Feeding so many people became very difficult. We were scheduled to receive the second instalment from the tribal department in the month of March. In the meantime we were using our other money to meet all expenses for the tribal and other children. But no money was released to us from the tribal department in March, April, May, June, July. Till date we haven't seen any money from the tribal department. We've been following it up relentlessly and are always told that because of the Pandemic the money has not been released from the State Government to the tribal department and therefore cannot be released to us.

We were so short of funds that we could not pay our teacher's salary for the month of March. This was a big problem too. Our teachers are not from financially secure backgrounds and depend on the salary that they receive from us to run their households. We felt very sorry for them but we had no alternative. Either let the children and staff in the school starve or pay our needy staff. But thanks to the timely help from Holland we were finally able to pay a part of their overdue salaries which was a big relief for them.

The Government has still not announced when schools can reopen. This has put us under a lot of pressure. We have started on line classes. But this is a problem. Many children do not have access to android phones. Similarly many do not have internet at all. But we are struggling to do the best we can.

During these long summer months when children were confined to the school and no outsiders were allowed to have contact with them we were faced with the problem of constructively entertaining them so they wouldn't just spend their days in front of the TV. I managed to find a seamstress who comes on a daily basis and has been teaching not only our children but our stranded working staff the basics of stitching. They've learned everything from hemming to making button holes, darning and all. They've now graduated to measuring and stitching simple dresses for themselves. They've mastered the use of manual sewing machines which was thoughtfully donated to us by some well wishers. I've had not only the girls but the boys taught these skills. I think this is a very good experience for them. It could help them earn money in later life if they take up tailoring as a profession.

I cannot begin to tell you how grateful we are for the help and support of our friends in Holland. This project is now completing seventeen years of its existence. This would not have been possible without the support of Stichting Nav-Jeevan. We thank you and the many children who are with us presently and those who've been able to find their place in society through us thank you.

Simran en Isha

Further education

Three of the four students for whom we have promised to pay for the further education have not yet started due to the corona measures.

Only Yash started training at the end of July at the Tango Charlie Army, Police Career Academy, a training in which he is mentally prepared to work in the army of the police.

Yash is taken by Noel and his sister Swati to the internal training at the Tango Charlie Army, Police Career Academy. You can see how tense he is, because he keeps his sister close by the hand.

As you can read in Aneeta's piece, we have had a lot of concerns about finances in recent months. The main reason is that the payment for the second half of the tribal department's school year has still not been received. We should have received this already in March. The tribal department indicates that they have not yet received anything because of the corona perils. This is a large amount that made it impossible for us to pay the salaries. Fortunately, the owner of Calder Holding, Godert van Buren, and an old-owner of Calder holding, Marius Touwen, helped us to solve this problem for the moment. We thank them very much for their donations.

We have made a number of subsidy applications to the charity funds and hope that a few of them are going to be awarded.

Board

We welcome Rita van de Ven and Anne van de Ven as new board members of Nav-Jeevan.
This brings the number of board members to 7.

• Aura Laumen, chairmen
• Miriam van der Sloot, secretary
• Annelies van de Ven, treasurer
• Tom Verhoeven, website
• Hans van der Sloot, recruiter schools and companies
• Rita van de Ven, board member
• Anne van de Ven, board member

Extra volunteer: Swatee Span, information

On behalf of the children and staff of Nav Jeevan we would like to thank you again for your donations.