This week, I have been the guest at Panchsheel Ashram School. I visited the classrooms at Panchsheel Ashram School. The 500 students live at the facility and are cared for and taught by 22 teachers. Students from class 1-12 study, play, sing, eat and work together at this wonderful school.
Some stories:
The Kindergarten children captured my heart. They are all tribal children from nearby villages and they speak Korku, a tribal language of the region. So they have to learn Marathi (the main Indian language of the region) then Hindi (the official language of India) plus a little English. That is so much to learn!
Every day the kitchen staff prepares two meals a day for all 500 children. Rice, daal, chapatis and vegetables. They have a policy that they can eat as much food as they want to: if a child asks for 3 chapatis, they get them. No one is deprived of 2 solid meals per day. They often have a snack as well, but the two meals are standard. Consequently, it costs a lot of money to cook for 500 every day of the year.
One of the games played here is called Kho Kho and it is played by both girls and boys. It is a complex game of tag between two poles with a team of folks (from what I can tell) and it requires a lot of running. I enjoyed watching the kids have so much fun playing it.
