india: Shillong Primary School

Introduction:

Volunteer playing with children in front of orphan's residential buillding

Teach English and core subjects to poor children and orphans in the beautiful hilly town of Shillong, North East India.
Little Prakash and his friends in Shillong need help!

Our primary school with an attached orphanage housing 10 children is being run by Didi Ananda Kalyanbrata, a yogic nun. The school currently has 120 children, some of whom study free as their parents are unable to pay even minimal fees. All the children learn meditation and yoga.

Environment:

Non Mynsong is a particularly poor area of Shillong, in the state of Meghalaya, Northeastern India. It is a melting pot of cultures: Bengalis, Nepalis, Biharis. Khasi (indigenous tribal group).

Most families live in rented wooden huts with one family per room on this crowded hillside. For most families, it is a daily struggle to survive.

W e have only a small school. In the future we want to develop our education programmes and increase the size of our orphanage and hostel to give more destitute and rural children from outlying areas the chance to study.

Activities you can get involved with:

Would you like to help teach our school children? Would you like to help care for the youngest orphans, who express their creativity through naughtiness the minute no one is looking? We also need help with fundraising to build better classrooms for our children?

If you would like to come and share your skills with us for a week, a month or 6 months, we will welcome you into our small family, teach you about our culture and give you a rich experience of the Indian way of life. If you wish, we will teach you yoga too!

Children studying in the classroom

Management

Didi Ananda Kalyanbrata is very kind and easygoing. She shows her warmth and hospitality by showering you with loads of delicious food. Her English is a bit weak, so she is hoping a volunteer will help her to improve. Didi has recently bought a new computer for the school and needs help to learn how to use it.

Volunteer Coordinator:

Malati is orginally from England, but has been working in India for over 15 years, learning about the culture, the languages and about the people. Five years ago she started a programme to help provide infrastructure to struggling village schools and has since arranged funds for many schools to help them to become self-sufficient.

Accommodation:

Volunteers stay in a classroom that has been converted into a simple bedroom with a large bed. In winter it gets really cold even with a heater. So bring warm clothes and a good sleeping bag.

Who do we need?

We prefer female volunteers; You must present a good, moral character and respect the local culture.

Children of Shillong

Your job as a volunteer

Role of Volunteer
* to teach English, maths, computer, science, history, geography or any other academic
or non-academic skills you have to the children
* to train the teachers to plan and teach creative lessons
* to help with after school homework
* to play games with or organize activities for the children during recreation time,
teach them about your life and share theirs
* to help us find ways to fundraise a better building for our school

Volunteers teaching class

What to expect:

In India rote learning is the norm and hundreds of bored pupils stream out of our schools every day burdened with books and with hours of homework ahead of them (an effort to compensate for the teaching defects in class time).

We would like a volunteer who can help train the teachers how to make lessons more interesting using playway methods. If you are a kindergarten or lower primary teacher with a creative mind and the capacity to work wonders on a shoestring budget, we will welcome you with open arms.
We would like a second person to teach English to the children and teachers to improve the standard. In India the children only learn to read and write English but never learn to talk it! We want to remedy this.

Little Prakash


Children help to cook

On the trip to the park

To read past experiences of volunteers at this project, click here