Excerpt from appeal written by Jugnu Ramaswamy (B 1956, D 2005) to raise funds for the Jagriti Public School in Katna.

February 2005

"It is now 15 years since my wife Shabnam and I set aside our careers and began an attempt to live out our convictions by creating learning opportunities for disadvantaged children who are denied advantages that benefit most of us as a class, & which our children continue to enjoy. It is thus that ‘Jagriti School’ was born as an idea. Begun in 1990 from a small shanty in a central Delhi slum, Jagriti grew from a single class of some 30 children to a school offering primary education to over 500 students.

"Then the Delhi government demolished Motia Khan (and our school) to reclaim valuable commercial space, and taught us two things. One, that since we could hardly hope to change the system, our small efforts would possibly have greater and more lasting value in some rural backwater rather than a city. (To some extent, the poor of our cities are still able to wrest earning opportunities, access some education and health facilities. In the villages, there is precious little to trickle down). And two, we also needed to own our school’s land – again something that was only affordable in a village.

"It is thus that in January 1998 we took Jagriti to Katna - a faraway Bengal village where Shabnam was born, in the district of Murshidabad. It is from there that the magic of education had once transported her father to Calcutta to become a doctor. For Shabnam, boarding school followed and a new world opened out, a feat that had never been replicated since. Our return brought this wheel a full circle.

more...

people | where we are | contact us | picture gallery

Jagriti, the Awakening film by Jugnu Ramaswamy

radio netherlands : jagriti