The 34 girls we are sponsoring from Panchsheel Ashram School for the school year 2023-2024.
The last few days of my trip have been occupied with locating, identifying and photographing the girls we are sponsoring this year. WE’ve had a great response to our Sponosrship program and this year we are supporting 34 students from Panchsheel School and 10 from Felix Convent School. (And perhaps more… stay tuned!) All of the girls are from village families and are struggling financially to afford the necessities of their school. Our support “fills in the gaps” with school fees, uniforms, books and stationary, and other school supplies. The process has been complex and it goes a bit like this:
Our Sponsored Students from Felix Convent School in Paratwara.
First, we have a list of the girls we’ve sponsored last year. So I take that list and make sure those girls are still enrolled, then I match them with their sponsors from last year. Then, with the teachers’ help, we identify new students to add to our list. This year, five students out of the ten girls we sponsored at Felix Convent School either passed out of the 10th grade exam, or moved away, so we needed to find 5 more to replace them.
The next step is taking photographs! But I need to make sure I match the photo with the correct name! That can be challenging. Recently, I started to record them saying their own names, which can help if/when I get confused.
The next step is to match all the sponsors with all the students and the final step is to notify the sposnors of the photos, names and information I’ve gathered. It can be a daunting process (and I am sure it coud be made easier and more streamlined….) but it works.