Monkton Day Nursery School - Supporting Others

Supporting Others - Centre for Learning (India)

Some of our parents may like to know that we support a school in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, Southern India. After sponsoring a child at Centre for Learning since 1990, we began to communicate with the Head teacher, Gurveen Singh, and eventually visited the school in 1996. It was only then that we realised that the school was in rented accommodation, and constantly experiencing difficulties when rogue landlords put the rent up so much that they would be forced to re-locate.

Gurveen had purchased a piece of land through sponsor money, and she proudly showed us the pile of sand she had bought toward the building materials. A caretaker lived under bin liners to make sure it was not stolen, and Gurveen educated his daughter in return. At the time, Ian and I were unsuccessfully trying to have more children, and were considering IVF. When we saw the struggle which Gurveen faced in trying to educate as many “street” children as possible, we decided not to embark upon the (expensive) journey of IVF, but to see if we could help to realise her dream.

We returned from India and organised various fund raising events. Ian raised £4,000 from shaving his head in school. (He was then Head of Sixth form at Liverpool College). I was in the privileged position of knowing most of the artists in Liverpool, and my friends all donated a work of art for auction. One of our “dads” at nursery was administrator for Carnatic Hall and helped a great deal in giving us the hall without a fee, and arranged an Indian Banquet at cost price.

The auction evening was amazing, and through the generosity of South Liverpool we raised £21,000 – enough to build the school.

The school was completed a couple of years ago, and I was stunned to find out that the school now has 13 teachers (8 full time and 5 part time), and a total of 75 children. There were just 30 children when we were there, and just Gurveen, her sister and mother and two volunteers as teachers.

In 2008 Gurveen was able to tell us that £1000 of our sponsor money this year would pay for every child to receive a hot cooked meal at lunch time for the whole year. For many of the children this is an incredible luxury. We visited the centre again in January 2009 and have compiled this video of our visit.

Gurveen herself is a highly educated woman, having a Doctorate which she gained under the supervision of Prof.John White and Prof.Graham Hayden. She teaches part time at Hyderabad University to fund the school, and has just one daughter, Binit. Her husband Pritpal works in a bank, and all of her family support her in running the school.

If you would like to know more about CFL, and possibly be willing to sponsor a child at the school, please contact Gurveen who will be delighted to hear from you. Sponsorship is not expensive, and for as little as £10 per month you could give a child in India an education to fit them for life. Her email address is kaur.gurveen@gmail.com. Although the website hasn’t been updated since 2003, there is more information on the India Learningnet.