Nav-Jeevan

Newsletter December 2013

In October the school was given accreditation by the state of Maharashtra. It was a process of years to get this recognition. We are very proud and happy we finally succeeded.

Since the beginning of this year we have financial difficulties. The prices have skyrocketed in India. Fortunately, there were also donations coming from the USA and recently also from Germany. The German volunteers not only do an excellent job on the project, but they also work as ambassadors for Nav-Jeevan in their homeland. The girls have created their own blog which is impressive to read. You can read their experiences and those of the children on njs-volunteer.blogspot.nl/.

Early October, the construction of a large dormitory was completed. There were two large dormitories scheduled, but it was eventually realized as one very large dormitory which can house 64 children. In November, we received a grant from the "the Advocacy Foundation for the (very) young child" for the furniture and fixtures of the dormitory.

In this newsletter I want to tell you some more about the background of a few of the Nav-Jeevan children.

Kalpana -an Honest Girl from Nav-Jeevan-

This is Kalpana Uikey. She is 10 years old and studies in 3rd English Medium.

Being a tribal child she has one of the poorest backgrounds of the children in Nav-Jeevan. This is why she was given new clothes when Nav-Jeevan received a kind clothes donation.

In her new pants, Kalpana found 200 Rupees (about € 2,40) which is more money than she has ever possessed. Nevertheless, she came to Vicky, the Principal of Nav-Jeevan, to tell her about what she found and to give the money back. Everyone was impressed with her honesty.

This is why she was honoured on a fete that Nav-Jeevan celebrated and was given a bar of chocolate.

But Kalpana does not only come from a family that can barely feed its children - when she was only five years old and her brother Karan was a baby their mother ran away and abandoned her children. No one has ever told them why she decided to do so. They stay with their father Akkal who is a small farmer and their grandmother Bhaddo. Although their 17 year old sister Sarita works as a maid in Nagpur and their grandmother works, too, the crop that the small rice field generates is barely enough to feed the family.
Karan and Kalpana were sent to NJS by the same teacher who brought all the other tribal children to the school. The siblings have been staying in the school for two years now and are very happy and grateful to be here.

Coming from such a poor background Kalpana and Karan can stay in Nav-Jeevan's hostel and study at the school for free. Because of having to cover the costs of children whose families are too poor to pay fees Nav-Jeevan depends on donations and on sponsors who give one of these great children access to a shelter, food, education and medical care.

Anil Jadhav - class 7th English Medium

Anil Jadhav first came to us when he was only two years old. He was picked up from Raj Nagar slums along with his elder sister Ranjita and brother Sunil. His father is a rag picker and his mother died when he was only a baby. His father took another wife who already had a child but she ran away after just a month.
Those days we had no hostel and Anil would sit in a corner while his sister and brother were studying. Before they joined our school the three children would stand in front of an eating joint. They would offer to clean vehicles in exchange for money.

Initially the father, who is uneducated, resisted sending the children to us. He could not imagine what benefit an education could give the kids. He instead considered the children attending school to be a "loss of income" for the family since if the kids were in school they could not go begging. We reached a happy compromise. The kids would bring their rags to the class and immediately after school they would go back begging. Another reason he allowed us to teach his children was because of the free meals the kids got in school.
Besides Ranjita, Anil also had three other elder sisters. One had a white patch around her eye. We took her to the doctor who said that the girl had either Cancer or Leprosy. Fortunately for her it turned out to be the latter. We had her treated and she was cured. She went on to marry a farmer and lives a respectable life in the village. The second sister, Babita, married a criminal who is constantly in and out of jail. When Babita had a baby, Anil and Sunil visited the family. That night Babita ran away after a fight with her husband. Her husband imprisoned Sunil and Anil and threatened to sell the brothers in Bombay if Babita did not come back. Only when she returned did her husband release the children.

Anil is an outstanding example of a highly motivated child. He voluntarily dropped back a year in order to be admitted in English medium. He is now in the 7th class. He tops his class in most exams. He is also a very talented dancer and artist. Everything he does is with determination and a desire to excel. Looking at him it is hard to believe the background from which he comes.
His elder brother Sunil cleared his Board exam last year. We have had him admitted to a technical institute where he is studying to become a certified electrician. He is also very intelligent and talented. The elder sister Ranjita cleared her Board exams two years ago and is now married and lives in Pune.
Anil's favourite subjects are sciences and computers. He is very ambitious and wants to become a scientist. Children like this give us encouragement that despite all the obstacles we face we are doing the right thing to change children's lives.

Yash Chahande - Class 4 English Medium

Yash Chahande is 9 years old and studies in 4th English Medium. He was born in a small village in Madhya Pradesh called Kelvadh. During his childhood he lived in a mud hut with his parents, his younger sister and brother. His father worked as a driver and his mother was a housewife.
When he was four years old his family situation changed drastically. He only remembers the few things his grandparents have told him. After a quarrel his mother murdered his father. Soon after she gave birth to his younger sister and immediately sold her. Yash does not remember the name of his younger sister. A case was filed against his mother and it's still going on. The justice system in this country is very slow, particularly in the rural areas.

Soon after she murdered the father, the mother remarried abandoning Yash. However she took Yash's younger brother Karan with her. She now lives in Sillori - another small village far away from Kelvadh. Yash and his grandparents have no contact with his mother. She doesn't bother to find out how her son Yash is doing. Fortunately for Yash his grandparents, who love him a lot, took over his care. His grandmother Puneshwar works as a labourer on the fields though his grandfather does not work at all. Nevertheless, they live in a proper house. Every holiday, his grandparents come by bus to take Yash back home to their village.
Yash was brought to Nav-Jeevan four years ago by his grandfather. He is an endearing child and craves affection. Academically he is very bright and will do well in life if he continues his studies. He loves to play cricket and wants to become an engineer when he grows up.

Tanushree and Yash Minnalwar  Classes 9 and 7 - Hindi

In 2005 when our present school building was inaugurated and we were looking for staff to run the hostel Seema Minnalwar turned up on our doorstep in a pitiful condition. She told us that she, her husband and two children had been thrown out of the rented room they lived in because both the parents had lost their jobs and had no money to pay the rent. They were now living on the street. We immediately employed her as a cook and her husband as the guard at the school. It was one of the smartest things we did. In those days we had just 30 children living in the school. Today we have 130 but the quality of the food has never deteriorated and is consistently good.

Seema's two children study in the school and live in the hostel. Her daughter Tanushree is 13 years old and studies in 9th class Hindi Medium. Her brother Yash is 13 years old and studies in 7th Hindi Medium. They are both average students but more than make up by their cheerful and caring attitudes. The elder daughter Tanushree is always willing to give a hand whenever anyone needs help with any work. We feel grateful that we were able to give this deserving family their self-respect back and provide them with a roof over their heads. And we also managed to get a cook for the school that is truly par excellence.

Arti, Tina and Sanchit Kathote  Classes 9, 8 and 6 - Hindi

Arti Kathote is 16 years old and studies in 9th class Hindi Medium. Her sister Tina is 13 and is in class 8, Hindi Medium while the youngest, a boy, Sanchit is 11 and studies in 6th class Hindi Medium.

The children's parents are daily wage labourers. Both of them are alcoholics. The siblings have an older brother named Rama whose one eye is completely white. Their two elder sisters are also labourers like their parents. During the rainy season, the older siblings used to go fishing in some lakes in Nagpur.
The hut that they live in is made out of plastic sheets. During the monsoon, water pours into the hut. When they want to wash their clothes, they have to go to a lake. Arti had an accident when she was just two years old. The pot in which water was boiling fell off the stove and burned her arm. Her parents did not take her to the hospital. They just put some local medicinal leaves which they had wet and wrapped around the baby's arm with coconut oil. Arti has ugly scar tissue on her arm which bears testimony to this childhood accident.

Usually, the local hostel children are brought back to school after the holidays by their parents or other relatives but these siblings are always late because their parents have no money for the bus. Routinely we have to send Mukesh, the school bus driver to pick up the siblings and bring them back to school after the holidays. He tells us the parents are always drunk.
The siblings have been in the school since Arti was five years old. Back in those days, classes were held in one big room. In the first year they brought another little brother besides Sanchit to school. After the summer vacations that brother never turned up. When we asked about him we were told that the brother got diarrhea because of the extreme heat and unclean water and died. It was shocking that something like this could happen in this day and age. The parents never took the child to the hospital. After that, during the holidays, we periodically send social workers to the slums to keep tabs on the children.

The siblings are all very clever. Last year Arti came fourth in her class while Tina came sixth. They are also very talented artists. Tina and Arti are very good dancers too. When asked what they want to do when they grow up Arti shyly says she wants to become an airhostess, Tina's a little less ambitious and wants be an English teacher and Sanchit wants to become a painter.

Simran and Sejal Shrivas

These two sisters have been living in the school for the last four years. They were born in Mankapur, an area in Nagpur close by to the school. The family belongs to the lowest strata of Indian society now known as scheduled caste.

This caste traditionally faced a lot of discrimination from the upper castes against which Mahatma Gandhi had fought. In the olden days these people were called untouchables and were doomed to do the most menial jobs.
The father however was one of the lucky ones and worked as a barber while their mother Babita stayed home tending to her two daughters. But tragedy struck the little family - the father died. When we probed further how this happened the elder sister Simran told us that he was poisoned. The girls don't really know why but their father was constantly fighting with a neighbour. This ended when the neighbour poisoned their father. Most probably rat poison was put into something the father drank and he died. The neighbour was brought to justice and jailed by the police but the girls were left fatherless. Tragedy would not leave this family alone.

Four years later after losing their father their mother died during the Indian festival of Holi. It was a tragic accident. The kerosene stove that she was using in the kitchen burst and she was burned to death. Sejal was a small baby and was sleeping in the hut. Simran was playing outside so there was no one to help the mother. Some kind neighbours took the two girls in. But these neighbours were also very poor and worked as manual labour. They kept them for a year but they could no longer afford to do so. Finally they brought these orphaned girls to the school. During the holidays the same kind neighbours take them back and besides the school they are the only family these girls now have. Simran wants to become a lawyer and Sejal wants to become a teacher when she grows up. Living in Nav-Jeevan they may have a chance to achieve their dreams.

On behalf of the children and the staff of Nav-Jeevan we thank you for your donations and wish you a Merry Christmas and all the best for 2014.