Urban

KINDNESS   Use of Funds: KHEL has 24 employees and 4 professional consultants. We support 305 children from preschool through 8th grade with free and fee-subsidized tuition. The average tuition paid by parents per child is INR1,500 per year (US$18.14/€16.93). Most parents don’t pay anything. INR US$@82 €@89 38,26,039 46,659.01 42,989.20 Financial/legal/travel/office/regulatory/taxes 32,51,809 39,656.21 36,537.18 Salary & other compensation 8,47,237 10,332.16 9,519.52 Government required retirement fund 1,88,393 2,297.48 2,116.78 Government required medical insurance 5,59,816 6,827.02 6,290.07 Overheads/maintenance/repairs/furniture/construction 1,97,897 2,413.38 2,223.56 School supplies/non-medical Covid aid 1,21,900 1,486.59 1,369.66 Leprosy colonies: emergency aid/dry food rations 1,33,400 1,626.83 1,498.88 Medical aid 4,03,800 4,924.39 4,537.08 Security 4,88,700 5,959.76 5,491.01 Higher education scholarships 61,039 744.38 685.83 Covid related supplies 1,25,892 1,535.27 1,414.52 IT 1,02,05,922 1,24,462 1,14,673 Total use of funds […]

Every year, the community around Lakshmi Devi Academy (LDA), KHEL’s school for underserved children in Dehradun, India, grows and changes. What remains constant is the need for education. Thirty-five years ago, we asked questions like, ‘how do we get our kids to sit still long enough to drink a cup of milk?’ Now we ask, ‘how do we give our kids an education that supports them academically, socially, and personally?’ And at the end of every year we ask, ‘what was our biggest challenge? Where did we succeed?’ Our biggest challenge was tracking what happens to students who leave LDA. In 2018, 12 students dropped out of school. Our community used to be mostly people who had been ostracised from their villages and were searching for a new home. Now, migrant families are usually looking for work and don’t intend to stay. They don’t have cell phones or addresses. They leave because they couldn’t find work, they found work somewhere else, someone died, got sick or married, they owe someone money, they ran out of money, it’s harvesting (or planting) season so they went back to their village, or any number of other reasons that we don’t know, and which they’re not obligated to tell us. It wasn’t too long ago that migrant families’ children worked, so it’s encouraging that while they’re in the community, they send their kids to LDA. Our greatest achievement was hiring Nikita. This doesn’t seem like such a big deal, she’s just another young woman working at her first job while studying for her B.Sc. Here’s what we did right: many years ago, we educated Devender, Nikita’s father. At the time, LDA only went up to 5th grade so he [...]

India is home to more than 225 million children ages 10 to 19 years. At Lakshmi Devi Academy (LDA), KHEL’s school for underserved youth in Dehradun, India, we provide a comprehensive education designed to give our children the tools to reach their full potential as individuals and leaders. Helping our kids become productive adults requires collective action on education, health, employment, personal development and interpersonal relationships. The Adolescent Resource Centre (ARC), instituted at LDA several years ago, gives our children the tools they need for their lives outside the classroom. ARC covers many overlapping areas of development. We discuss life skills and livelihood. The children learn decision making and relationship skills, and they spend time in personal contemplation. We share with them what kinds of changes to expect during adolescence, how our social attitudes might change during this time, and crucial information on reproductive health. We talk about nutrition, health, hygiene, what constitutes a balanced diet, and common and infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Throughout this year long process, we encourage curiosity, open discussion and problem solving. The ARC councilors, Madhavi and Karishma, stress that confidentiality is a critically important part of ARC. Our kids and staff all live in the same community. The advantage to this is that everyone looks after everyone else. The disadvantage is that everyone knows everyone else’s business, and gossip among or about teenagers can be devastating. Many of our kids don’t have access to personal space in their homes; sometimes a living room doubles as a family bedroom, and in that same space there may be a small area in one corner for cooking. This makes confidentiality vital to building trust with our children because [...]