The Sandipani Muni School in Vrindavan is a project of Food for Life. This is basically a school for poor children in Vrindavan who otherwise wouldn't have a chance to go to school and receive any education. The school provides school uniforms, meals, books as well as the education. They also have a preschool/kindergarten for the younger siblings of the school children. In India, often times very young children are responsible for their much younger siblings while the parents go out to do some work. In order to send the children to school, there must be some way for the younger kids to be cared for, so the School also takes care of them. All of the children are sponsored to go to the school. It costs only $100 a year to sponsor a child to attend the school.
While in America I was checking out the blog of the school's founder Rupa Raghunatha das, a devotee from Italy who has been in charge of the Food for Life foundation in Vrindaban for many years. In his blog Rupa posts some appeals for donations for specific people that the school's funds can't cover. At that time I read a small entry about a 17 year old girl who wanted to go to the local college in Vrindavan but couldn't afford it. The amazing thing about this girl is that her parents actually WANTED her to go to school also. This is quite unusual in the village. Normally the parents want to marry off their daughters as young as they can to get them "out of their hair"....so they won't have to pay for their maintenance any more. I also believe that they younger the girls are...they cheaper the dowry is. At any point...here was a girl who wanted to go to college, and had the support of her family. Rupa estimated that for 3 years of college, including uniforms and books it would cost aproximately $400 (TOTAL!) I mentioned this to my mom and she immediately offered to sponsor half of the girl's school. When I wrote to Rupa to tell hiim about it he was quite happy as someone else from England had offered to also sponsor half of the cost.
When my mother sent the funds to me for the girl's school, she also sent some additional money which sponsored another 2 girls to go to highschool locally. So one morning I made an appointment to go to the school to meet Rupa and drop off the donation. I arrived at the gradeschool around 8:15 am to find all of the kids involved in singing and dancing to Kirtan (singing of God's names). The kids from both schools (gradeschool/ preschool-middleschool) were there singing and dancing happily. I watched from the side for only a few minutes because the kids immediately grabbed my hands and dragged me over to dance with them. It was quite funny...I was going around in a circle with little girls...with two tiny girls standing like Radha and Krishna in the center. The singing and dancing continued for over a half an hour. As soon as it stopped I had had a little boy (who didn't even come up to my knees) begging me with his arms upraised to pick him up. I put him on my hip, had another kid holding my hand and made my way over to speak to Rupa. We walked over to the other school with the preschoolers and he proceeded to show me around the preschool.
The kids there are really young and really tiny. They come from total slums. Most of them live in shacks made out of some sticks with a plastic tarp for a roof. Rupa said that most of them come with some skin diseases because of their dirty living conditions, so first thing every day the tiny kids get bathed with soap and dried and powdered. Rupa said that after a week of being bathed with soap most of their skin problems disappear. In the morning all of the small children get milk with vitamins and some cookies to eat. After that they play, and then at noon they get a nutritious lunch. Then they have a nap and at 2 pm their older siblings pick them up to go home.
When Rupa and I were sitting amongst the children they were quite enthusiastic to sit on our laps. One small girl, Radhika, whom Rupa said is never without a smile, kept giving me kisses!
Later I got a chance to meet the girl whom my mother sponsored to go to college. What a lovely girl!
All in all it was a fantastic day!
www.fflvrindavan.org
http://fflv.blogspot.com
