JEEVAN DEEP SCHOOLS PROJECTS

The Anand and Jeevan Deep projects cover three areas, viz. education, health care, and village development. Of these, the schools have always taken a central role.

Currently, Kailash Prasad and his Jeevan Deep team serve 10 villages, tucked away in the jungles south of Bodhgaya proper and the site of the Magadh University Campus.

In each of these, the morning sunrise announces a buzz of activity, when (often very young) mothers bring their children to the shed, or the house, or the banyan tree, where the Jeevan Deep Instructor is already preparing for class. The children will be attending classes until noon, often watched by their most curious mothers, who pick up their own few letters of the alphabet or their own basic pieces of math in the process.

The educational philosophy of the Jeevan Deep team follows the precepts of Anaupacarik Shiksha, i.e. Non-Formal Education, which means that instruction is not obligatory or structured and is learned outside the context of a formal school. Inspired by the example of the educational vision of Rabindranath Tagore, established among other places at Shantiniketan in Bengal, Kailash Prasad, Janardan, Kuleshvar and the others of the team see no obstacle in the lack of school buildings or other means of logistic support – firmly believing that the best kind of education is imparted by a strong and charismatic teacher, and through models, metaphors, songs and plays which are embedded in the cultural and social framework of the students.

For these reasons, it is imperative that the Jeevan Deep teachers be deeply engaged in the local social and cultural tissue of the Dalit community, and that they be strongly committed to the same ideals as those held by Jeevan Deep.

With Anand, we gather funds to make sure that the Jeevan Deep teaching staff be fairly paid, and they can rely on enough teaching and training material to fulfill their challenging mission. Funds, therefore, are devoted to salaries, writing materials, playground materials and schoolbooks.

From personal experience, we can testify that education makes children happy. And the happiness of a child, the smile on its face, is in fact reason enough for us to continue what we are doing.

The mere fact that educated children will be the ones responsible for the self-enhancement of the entire community, of course, is an additional bonus making the project worthwhile in the long run.