Untouched by comfort

I recently read about a school called the 'Shanti Bhavan'located near Bangalore. It imparts education to underprivileged children.
But this was not what gripped my attention. It was the fact that the children housed by this school belong to the lowest caste of what we call the 'untouchables'. Well, their lives seem to be living up to this very name. They are 'untouched' by any helping hand, or for that matter, even proper clothing, clean drinking water and other basic amenities. In such a scenario, a school like the 'Shanti Bhavan' comes as a blessing.

Quite evidently, adapting to a comfortable way of life is difficult for these children who have not had any access to the basic necessities and comforts of life like toilets, beds, etc. They have never had any kind of exposure to pre-nursery education. They have never held a pencil, nor have they been exposed to any form of educational stimuli.
The faculty has to start by socialising them.

The goal of this school, which takes in students when they are 4 years old, is to give them a world-class education so they can aspire to careers and professions that would have been totally beyond their reach, and have been so for generations. The students live on campus for a greater part of the year. Their parents visit them every three months, taking them home for short vacations twice a year.

What I found outstanding was the pre-admission procedure. Before admitting its students, Shanti Bhavan researches the families of each child over a period of five months in order to ascertain his/her socio-economic profile. The recruitment team consists of a social worker, a clinical psychologist, a paediatrician and the school principal. This way, the overall needs of the community are met in a more constructive way.