Newsletter from Jagriti Vihara February 2017

The Activities in the Campus
The final Secondary Examination of the girls begins on 17.02.2017. The girls have been working hard to get prepared for the Examination. In our country this is the season of stress and extreme pressure of work for students. They get up very early in the morning and go to bed very late in the night. Study consumes most of their times. Presently they do not have any time for playing, singing and dancing. One feels the atmosphere of stress everywhere, in the hostel, in the dining hall and in the study room.

In our country the examination period presents a very unpleasant pictures of struggle for getting desired success in the exams. In order to reduce the stress felt by the students, our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, in a Radio Broadcasting, appealed to the students to replace pressure by pleasure.

Jayaji, after arriving at JV, managed to get sufficient study material for introducing the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) to the new batch of girls. He has been studying the regulations and the syllabus of the NIOS which is an autonomous institution under the Dept. of School Education and Literacy, Govt. of India. He feels that the system of the open schooling will be a good alternative of the present formal and unnecessarily complicated system of schooling considering the hardships of the girls from under privileged families.

Personnel who live and work in the campus of Jagriti Vihara have been trying to find skilled workers to build the proposed bathroom for the family of Vincent and the new floor of the kitchen. So far they have not succeeded in getting suitable workers for doing the work.The total work force of the area is, it seems, used by the numerous brick making factories which temptingly offer plenty of alcoholic drinks besides the daily minimum wages. Anyway, our friends from Dumaro have assured us to cooperate with us wholeheartedly to see that the building work is started in the beginning of March and gets completed by the end of March.

The school girls, with the help of Geeta, managed quite well to grow tomatoes, beans, peas, egg plants, palak and some spices in the field in front of the teachers houses.

The rest of the activities continue to take place as usual.

With greetings,
Rajesh
For the Information group of Jagriti Vihara

Newsletter from Jagriti Vihara maj 2017

Dear friends,
Since the beginning if this winter we had to take special and extra care of the 18 girls preparing themselves to appear at the final secondary examination. Considering their background they were very worried about the result of the exams. Without exception all these weeks their Mathematics and English during their study hours Jaya ji and the maths teacher, Gopal ji were unfailingly with them to help them plan study and guide them in answering the probable questions going to be asked in their exams. Finally when the exams were taking place both Jaya ji and Gopal ji accompanied them up to entrance of the examination hall and wished good luck of each of them. When the exams were over the girls expressed their thankfulness to JV and spent one week at JV cleaning the paths, working in the kitchen garden and helping in the kitchen. This week was a period of relaxing, mixing with each other and talking about their dreams for the future. We are now waiting for their results which are expected to be published in the middle of May.

The girls who have been promoted from class IX to class X frequently contact us for the help they expect from us. We had the meetings in Dumaro with their parents who wished to help them prepare for shifting to JV girl’s hostel in July. At the same time the parents of several girls from Bisunpur, Balbal, Marangloiya and Kalyanpur contacted us and wanted to know if we were in a position to admit girls to class IX. We requested them to wait for our decision which is expected to be made by the middle of July. This decision of JV depends on our financial position and appointment of some new teachers.

Everyone at JV is happy to see the new and clean floor of the kitchen. Thank you dear JVV and Esul for your support.

All on a sudden, on Good Friday the bushes and the plants in our campus caught fire at about 3 o’clock when most of the residents of JV were in the local Catholic Church for participating Easter prayer. Gita, Salony, Kashinath and their children rushed to the fire site and worked hard for more than three hours to extinguish the fire, Thank god and Angels for invisibly helping Gita, Salony, Kashinath and the children in protecting the houses from the fire and the high rising flame.

Jaya ji has thoroughly studied the methods of education implemented by the Open Schooling system. He will let you know his opinion about this system when he meets JVV during this spring.


With warm greetings,
Core Group of Jagriti Vihara