A sponsor's visit to a Project Mala school

My last blog entry reflected on the email I had received from Project Mala about a trip that is being organised for sponsors. I mentioned that Project Mala is willing to welcome individual sponsors to visit its schools in India and commented that I expect it would be an amazing experience to do so.


Well Celia Davies and Jonathan Waters, Project Mala sponsors who have had the experience of visiting a Project Mala school have written the following few lines of their impressions of the visit to the school and given permission for me to add their account to this blog.


Reading about their visit is another reminder to me of how much I would like to visit one day but in the meantime how pleased I am to have come across the charity Project Mala and enter into a sponsorship arrangement so for just a few pounds a month from me a child in India can receive an education … and so much more. Please read on to see what I mean. Please visit the Project Mala website if you can sponsor a child.


“We arrived in Varanasi on an overnight sleeper train from Agra. Unfortunately we did not arrive until about 9.00, it should have been 6.30 and we had difficulty with signals on our mobile phones but our Tour leader assisted. Anil picked us up from our hotel around 11.00 so we had time for a quick breakfast before setting off to the schools.


Anil had kindly arranged for us to actually visit all of the classes so we saw children of all ages and had the opportunity to see a wide range of subjects being taught. We were particularly impressed with the maths class where quite young children (I think about 10 or 11) were doing percentages and profit and loss without the luxury of calculators UK children have. Although the classes were large by UK standards the children were working hard to learn and seemed happy and contented if somewhat bemused by these two strangers arriving in their school. One or two older ones took the opportunity to try out their English on some native speakers and the younger classes delighted us by singing us English songs.


All the classes were well attended and the children smartly turned out and despite a lack of resources as we know it, the benefits were obvious.

Anil then took us to one of the other schools but on the way stopped off at a state school with the aim of showing us the difference. As we approached the school it seemed strange that it was so quiet. We spoke with the headmaster and one of the children had been killed in a road accident during the day and the children had been sent home. The school had no toilet facilities and the child had been killed crossing the road to a field. It cast a shadow over what had been a very happy and positive experience.


In summary we were very impressed and very happy to see how so many children benefit by your charity. Our trip was very busy and very varied and the day in Varanasi was actually the only free day we had in India, we consider ourselves very fortunate to have shared it with Anil and his school.”

Thanks to Celia Davies and Jonathan Waters for their account and for their permission to use it here.