The school was founded with the aim of providing children from poor families with an atmosphere of love and respect where they can enjoy the experience of learning and freely develop their innate talents. In 2006, especially, we could see many successes such as school building getting accomplished and having enrolment of 250 children. Most of the children come from the fisherman background, having no educational background. Now many children are able to understand English and recognize the words. It was our initial struggle to teach them. Because no one in the village could help them. Further, there was no English medium school in the village. Another victory for the school was the appointment of qualified teachers to teach the children in the school, since Tharangambadi is a village where there is a scarcity of educated people and appointing teachers from outside would have been very expensive. But, fortunately teachers from the nearby villages who are efficient and qualified for teaching have joined the school.
Many dignitaries like CEO of Philips innovation Campus, CEO of United way International, CEO of Samsung International and the executives from Sap Labs have visited the school and have been impressed by the school.
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Even if the notorious tsunami of late 2004 had never happened, there would still be hundreds of thousands of people on India’s south west coast struggling to keep body and soul together. It’s a struggle that seven-year-old Nivedha’s father gave up, taking his own life while she was still an infant.
Today, Nivedha lives with her sister, mother and alcoholic step-father in the fishing village of Tharangambadi. She attends the local HOPE foundation School, where she studies in second standard and attains good results. Although Nivedha is a competent student, this is largely the result of great efforts by her HOPE foundation teachers. It has not always been this way.
When Nivedha first arrived here, she stood out. Not only was she scholastically weaker than her peers, but she was very poorly groomed – her clothes were often unwashed, and her hair was rarely combed. Even her manners were poor. The teachers became concerned and investigated the girl’s home life. It became clear that there were significant domestic conflicts and that the family was very, very poor. Since they had only one source of income, Nivedha’s mother would depart very early each morning to work, leaving her two daughters to look after themselves. Inevitably, the girls were neglected and Nivedha, the younger of the pair, suffered the most.
HOPE foundation staff quickly undertook to give special support to Nivedha and to her sister, Nishanthi. Uniforms and stationery were provided free of charge and personal assistants were allocated to help the girls with life skills. It is clear today that the care has paid off. Nivedha, in particular has benefited. In the year she has been here, she has grown from a scared street urchin into a competent, confident and well-presented pupil.
