© Penelope Gan – All Rights Reserved – Manali, Himachal Pradesh, INDIA

Despite the success of a few world class schools such as the Indian Institute of Technology, India’s education system is in a dismal state overall. Spending just 3.5% of its gross domestic product on education, of its 1 million schools, most are state-run and reported to be sub-standards.

Set against this backdrop, tens of thousands of private school have sprung up across India in recent decades. Once preserved for the elite, private schools in India have undergone rapid transformation and growth to satisfy the educational aspiration of middle-class. This trend it appears has begun to extend to villages in the rural areas, and poor families have increasingly expressed willingness to pay at least a small percentage of their income to bolster the educational prospect of their children.

Despite these efforts to provide for a better and far reaching education system, one fact remains: of the 96% of India’s children enroll in primary school, about 40% drops out by the age of 10 (UNESCO 2006). The root causes for these dropouts are attributed largely to poverty, family problems or lack of awareness among parents on the importance of literacy, let alone education.

Acknowledging this, some commendable localised ‘solutions’ have surfaced with the emergence of NGO-linked and individual funded private schools that hands out scholarships and highly subsidised fees.

Manali Model School is one of such schools ran by Raju ji – a physically handicapped man, who after spending 5 years with various grass root and national level NGOs championing literacy programmes (‘Mission Illiterate’) with villagers and the elderly, decided to take on personal bank loans (at various intervals) to build a school for ‘slow learners’ with the aim of providing inclusive education that does not exclude children on the basis of caste, creed, financial status, academic performance, or physical disability.

Twelve years on, the Manali Model School is a 3-storey structure – with room for expansion – that provides elementary, primary and secondary schooling between 9:30am to 3:00pm, in addition to night and computer classes for dropouts and adults in the evenings. Staffed by 10 full time teachers, Raju ji and his wife are not just actively involved in formal classroom education and the daily operations of Manali Model School, but finds the time to knock on the doors of pockets of villages in the Himalayan foothills and visits the tents of the nomadic Rajasthani community with the aim of convincing parents on the importance of education and its role in improving the lives of their children and future generations.

Although Raju ji is well aware that these students are unlikely to afford even subsidised fees, uniforms and allocate 5-1/2 hours a day, he is unperturbed and soilders on with his ‘Mission Illiterate’ dream.

“Some pay. Some don’t. It’s ok. If they come 10 to 15 hours a week, I am happy. Education is not about learning algebras or memorizing history books, it’s about character building and understanding the fundamental skills you will use in daily life. This is my hope for them. My dream for these children and their families.”

Raju ji

Having survived the strife his ‘Mission Illiterate’ dream had created with his late father, outcast by his village, near bankruptcy and continuous debts, Raju ji is far from giving up the Manali Model School, his 10 staff and approximately 130 students he has when school reopens next month.

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For those who would like to volunteer and learn more about Raju ji and the Manali Model School, please contact:

Hemraj (Raju) Thakur, c/o Manali Model School, Bhajogi, Manali, Kullu 175131, Himachal Pradesh, INDIA | rajumanali12@gmail.com | +919 816812410

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