The Deenabandhu school in Chamarajanagar has developed into a school that truly fulfils Mr. Jayadev’s dreams – it serves as a good school for the poor. If they have even a little bit of money the parents like to send their children to English medium schools. The children who come to the Kannada medium Deenabandhu schools are children who cannot afford to go anywhere else, and whose parents, like practically every parent in India, want a good education for their children and send their children to the Deenabandhu school rather than to a govt. school. The school’s popularity among the poor has risen rapidly and last year they had to turn away some applicants, which they did by saying they were late to apply (this is going to be a difficult problem if the number of applicants continues to increase).

A small incident illustrates what an excellent school this is. When we visited a small boy, either from UKG or 1^st grade came running out, put his hand in mine, and took me to where there was an image of Buddha and showed how he had decorated it what he used to decorate it with. The confidence of the child struck me – he was not shy or scared of an adult stranger – he very naturally took hand to show me something he had done that he was proud of. This is the natural behavior of a child that is killed in so many schools. I assume the readers know about the Deenabandhu school so I will not write more about its relatively informal classroom (children seated in a circle around the teacher), the activities-based learning, and the excellent teachers Mr. Jayadev has been able to hire skilled as he is in selecting people.

The vast majority of children in Deenabandhu school are from families with an annual income of less than Rs. 15,000 a year. Given this, they often do not get enough food at home. The midday meal at the school was started rather spontaneously after several incidents where the children fainted at school, and they realized this was due to hunger and lack of nutrition. The 160 children from classes I to VII get lunch (the kindergarten children leave at 12.30 so they are not currently included; the school stops at class VII now). Lunch is rice, a dal containing one vegetable (when they get it they use wild spinach, if they get more space are hoping to grow some vegetables), and butter milk. In true Deenabandhu style the organization of the lunch is managed well. A cook is the only person hired. The children wash their own plates and take turns serving and cleaning up afterwards. They have code to request more food/dal/butter milk by raising their arm/finger appropriately without raising their voices to shout to the children who are serving. This results in a fairly quiet meal. The children are also taught not to waste and do not waste at all.

The meal starts with a prayer. I will be honest in saying that the dal is quite watery, the vegetables in the dal meagre, and the buttermilk watery. (Unlimited amounts of all three are available though). This is done simply because they are not able to afford anything else. This comes to Rs. 6 a meal per child, so for a month his adds up to something in the region of Rs. 25,000. Meals are expensive for an NGO to provide, especially because this is a recurring expense with no way to end it (unless the parents’ income increases), and self-sufficiency for the high amount that is required is quite impossible. However there are times when it has to be done, and I think the midday meal scheme at Deenabandhu school is one such. Occasionally they have vegetable bath but for that meal the oil expense goes up so they are not able to do it very often. As with everything else Mr. Jayadev runs this on a threadbare budget maximally utilizing every paisa.

Pictures: The first two are of the children in school, and are rest are the meal they have in school.