India, Orchha - Maya School project

In Orchha, situated in northern India, we are supporting Eeva Maya Schult from Finland, a great woman, who is building a school for the poorest children of the area. We’ve been to India and visited Eeva several times. We’ve met the students and sat on the ground and talked with them.
Currently we are in touch with her every day. Her project has become our project. And we’d like it to become yours too.
A school - after a fashion - has already existed since 2005. It consists of four rented rooms in a rather unhealthy, tumbledown building, where, despite the conditions, every day the youngsters can attend lessons and have a meal.
Now we need to build a proper school. The land has already been purchased and now the work needs to begin.
We are looking into the best way to raise the funds necessary to build the school.
In the meantime, there is a sponsorship programme devoted to each child. With just 13 euro a month you can guarantee that a child has school lessons, books, clothing and a daily meal.If each one of us does one small thing every day, together, day by day, we can do something special: we can give these youngsters a real chance for the future.
We look forward to working with you!

Eeva Maya Schult is a Finnish woman, aged 63. Her former occupation was as a nurse.
Ten years ago, she visited India on holiday, and happened to arrive in Orchha.
“I came to a poor colony where some small children with swollen bellies were sitting in the dust covered in flies, putting mud and cow dung in their hungry mouths. I felt really out of my depth and couldn’t stop crying. But that helped me galvanize!”
Since that day Eeva has worked to realise her dream. To give these children food, clothing and a school to have the chance to build a different future.

The Maya School. The following year Eeva started up the Maya School, in the open air, in Orchha: in the very place where she had first seen the poor street kids with swollen bellies sitting in the mud in amongst the cow dung.
Eeva and other volunteers worked tirelessly for a year. And now there is a school house opposite that site: an old building rented by Eeva. The school is crumbling and unhealthy, with seven rooms: four for the school and three where Eeva and the other teachers live. Believe me, the conditions are very basic indeed.
Eeva works without any salary at all. The other teachers, who are Indian, are really very poor. They work for a salary of 1200 rupees, which is equivalent to around 18 euro a month.

Orchha. The school is on the outskirts of Orchha, an ancient town founded in 1501 AD.
Many palaces and fine buildings still in existence are a reminder of its architectural glory, during the reign of the Mughal Emperors. Now these palaces are falling into disrepair.

First class.  Around 80 children, aged between 4 and 14, attend the Maya School. Their parents belong to the under-privileged caste and are below the poverty threshold. Here are the youngest kids in the first class. They have to study sitting on the floor.

Second class. Many villagers can’t afford to let their children attend school, as they need them to help with the work in the fields and to do household chores or care for their younger siblings.
To accommodate these needs, the Maya School has flexible class times.

 Third class. At the school, Eeva and the other volunteers teach Hindi, English, mathematics, science and yoga. The children are split into four classes, not only based on their ages, but also on their learning levels.

 Fourth class. At the end of the fourth year money needs to be raised to enable as many gifted children as possible to carry on studying.
The best way out of poverty is to educate people.


At lunch. To give you an idea to the kind of deprivation the children were suffering on a daily basis, some of the children's stomachs were completely swollen due to lack of protein. They urgently needed a daily serving of lentils. So Eeva rented a small room to use for cooking, found a cook and arranged for a local woman to carry the food to the school on her head.
Now the children have their midday meal every day at school: rice, lentils, vegetables and fruit.

Eeva, Romano Ravasio and the teachers. Romano Ravasio, Art Consulting’s managing director, has visited the Maya School several times.
Eeva says: “I fully understand and appreciate your desire to know exactly how your donations are spent and on what. And I’m well aware of the malpractice of many disreputable organisations. You are all welcome to come and see the accounts and we are ready and indeed keen to disclose to each donor exactly how we spend your contributions”.

The Maya School’s pupils. Just looking at these children’s eyes is enough to make us want to help them. You can support one of them for a full school year, providing him or her with books, clothes and a midday meal, with just 13 euro a month. You can keep in touch with him or her too.
Giving could be an experience to treasure for you too.

Going home. During the monsoon season it can sometimes be very difficult for the children to get to school, since some have to walk for kilometres. So Eeva has hired an auto rickshaw to pick the children up and drop them off home from school.
We’ve seen as many as 17 kids squeezing into this tiny rickshaw!

A new location for the Maya School. Our target now is to start using a new building for the school in an existing property in Orchha, which has been donated to the school.
Eeva has been collecting donations for this new building for the past year now and has gathered together a small sum. She also has all the necessary permits in her possession. But we need to collect more money.

Romano with some pupils. Going to visit the pupils at the Maya School has become an eagerly anticipated appointment for us. Like you, we were hesitant about the idea of donating. Too many cases of fraud, too much money disappearing into somebody’s pockets.
Now we know exactly what we can do to help the children who need our help in a concrete way. We look forward to working with you!