Bus Them To Purkal

Over the last few months, I have been involved with one of the most interesting projects I have ever had the good fortune to be a part of. We are running a programme at PYDS called the Bus Them To Purkal project (BTTP for short) which aims to take 9-11 year old girls* from a background where little or no education has been available and prepare them for life and entrance into our main educational scholarship programme. The girls are all from families with an average income of about £30 a month and live in simple mudhuts in the rural, mountain villages around Purkal. They mostly use firewood to cook with and often have no toilet or running water facility.

We began the process by employing a local man (the father of one of our present students) to do a survey of the villages to find us 50 or 60 suitable candidates who met the poverty and geographical criteria. Once this had been done, I joined this man and checked all of the homes myself with the help of some of our teachers to verify the local man's work. It is easy for him to be influenced by friends and the local community, many of whom want a free education for their child despite having enough money to afford it themselves. We saw several such cases and eliminated families who were obviously quite comfortable.

Once we had narrowed the survey down to about 50 girls, we began the assessment process. Each Sunday, we called 15 children to our learning centre and 3 teachers including myself spent a day observing and assessing their aptitude for learning. The assessment was broken up into about 8 tests aimed at monitoring the child's attention span, visual and aural memory, interest, perseverance, numerical skills, observational skills, patience, how they work in groups and pairs and their general behaviour. This was a very challenging and difficult process, which took a lot of thought and continuous re-evaluation. We split each group of 15 into three groups of 5 and were often having to observe all 5 children simultaneously. After each session, the three of us sat together and analysed each child's performance and family situation carefully, before making a selection of definite candidates and maybe cases which we would reassess at the end of the assessment process.

Many difficulties and ethical questions were raised along the way, and I often asked myself whether what we were doing was fair and inclusive. Local, village politics entered into the equation as people began to feel competitive about the assessments and some parents even started coming to my home to try to influence me. Some also sent their children with pen and notebook in hand to perform some kind of impromptu written test!

We have just made the final decision about the 23 children we have decided to admit. They are all from deserving backgrounds and all have a spark that will hopefully see them through the challenging future which awaits them. Essentially, we are striving to nurture children who have the potential to become intelligent, responsible and sensitive citizens of the world, not just provide a substandard education to poor children.

The group will be joining us on Monday along with their parents and will be getting measured for uniforms and inducted into the programme. It is probably one of the biggest responsibilities that I have had, and I hope that I have made the right decisions.

Some picture of the assessments are on my picassa page at
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/guybnauti/GuylliversTravels?authkey=Skk_sW4U-ss#


* The girl child is traditionally sidelined in Indian society and is often not given any education beyond the very poor standard, government primary education. Our society feels that by targeting the female child there is a much greater effect on the family and society as a whole. This is the reason that this particular programme is aimed at girls rather than boys.