© Penelope Gan – All Rights Reserved – Zang Dhok Palro Phodong Monastery – Kalimpong, INDIA

He kicked at the pebbles and chased a cat along the way, like any young boy would do, creating a brief moment of uneasiness for me. But the moment he arrived at the monastery, he suddenly turned sullen – quiet, distant and serious.

Traditionally, the eldest son of a Tibetan family would stay on with the family and the second male child will be sent to the monastery. These children generally fell into three categories: pious believers, children of poor serfs* who entered the monastery to make a living and those sent to temples to meet a quota.

Life in the monastery is difficult with many rules to follow. There is a regular pattern. Apprentices rises at 5:30 a.m. in the summer and 6 a.m. in the winter, amid the sounds of mantra chanting. Breakfast is zanba, a traditional dish made of barley flour, washed down by ghee tea. After lunch, there’s a two-hour rest period. Afternoon study starts at 3:30 p.m., when they learn politics, laws and the religion, culture and history of Tibet.

Although it might sound dull to many young men and children, these apprentices says that their life is not all that different from that of their peers. Watching TV, listening to pop music, playing games are part and parcel of their routine.

* Temples had quotas for the serfs, and those who joined for this reason were called zunzhas. Among the ranks of lamas, generally 70 percent were from impoverished families.

© 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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Click HERE for FULL slideshow / multimedia

The Spastic Children’s Association of Selangor and Federal Territory (SCAS & FT), Malaysia, was established in February, 1960 in a garage of the Red Cross to address the shortfall in the education system that does not cater to children suffering from cerebral palsy (CP). In 1962, the SCAS & FT formally established itself and built a center when it obtained a piece of land and a grant from the former Mayor of Selangor.

Enrollment of children with CP has since increased from seven to approximately three hundred students to date and they are provided free transport, education and various training and rehabilitation treatment such as physiotherapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy and hydrotherapy. Apart from providing the main education and rehabilitation treatments, the SCAS & FT also carries out interesting and beneficial extracurricular activities such as sports, music sessions, gardening, needlework and swimming.

The SCAS & FT accepts children in their centre from as young as one year old to nurture and mould them into self-reliant individuals. Generally, those with less severe CP will start daycare therapy as an outpatient treatment and, if progress is made, they can then enroll in the early intervention program. Older children will be enrolled in the School Section and adult students are employed in the Sheltered Workshops.

Being a self-reliant organization that strives to help every parent who has difficulties providing care to CP children, the SCAS & FT’s efforts have been funded by a handful of private companies and individuals, many of whom have benefited from the SCAS & FT’s charitable services.

My involvement with SCAS & FT started six years ago when my nephew was diagnosed with severe CP as a result of birth negligence. Though he will never progress from the outpatient daycare therapy session, the SCAS & FT have never once denied him treatment and administers the same therapies and dedication levels as that of CP children with hope of rehabilitation. More importantly, it is a place that has provided my family with emotional support by fostering a caring and open environment amongst all students, families and volunteers.

© Penelope Gan – All Rights Reserved – Naggar, Kullu Valley, Himachal Pradesh, INDIA

Set against picturesque backdrops of high mountain passes, the gushing Beas River, lush apple orchards, bucolic alpine meadows and glacier, in Himachal Pradesh lies secluded hamlets infamous for its world class charas (Hindi for hashish).

Grown wild, traditionally the locals use the hemp fibre for ropes and to weave traditional shoes, with seeds being kept aside for its medicinal properties. However, in the 70s, hippies from the West flocked this pristine valley in search of a cosmic high.

With a perfect micro climate – sun-drenched ridges and healthy soil, Kullu Valley’s cannabis plants grow in abundance and is reputedly the cream of the crop; with ‘Malana Cream’ ranking the best in the International Cannabis Cup event held annually in Amsterdam. Other brands include AK-47, Russian Mist and Space Ball.

Raking in approximately Rs 900 crore per annum, naturally the locals cashed in on the trade, alongside a nexus of expats, local peddlers and international smugglers. With the emergence of a mini-Colombia sort of cartel in the Kullu Valley, comes a host of problems that has spurred  aggressive crackdowns by the Indian police and the Narcotics Control Bureau under the supervision of the Inspector General of Police.

However, local and international media attention in particular seems to concentrate only on news of missing foreign nationals in the Kullu Valley such as Israeli-American backpacker Amichai Shtainmetz, British Ian Mogford, Israeli Nadav Mintzer, and Guy Daudi, Canadian Ardavan Taherzadeh, Rotterdam Maarten de Brujin, Russian Alexei Ivanoc, Australian Burfitt Jacqueline Louise, and the perhaps the most notoriously covered is Anna Bartlett a 25-year old British girl  whose body was washed up in a river. The fact is almost 50,000 foreign tourists visit the valley every year, with Israelis making the majority of them. As per official records, 57 foreigners have died in the region due to accidents and ‘accidents’, attributed to trekking and drug overdose. Unofficial records suggests that a relatively high percentage of missing foreigners are ‘missing’ or ‘dead’ … having chosen to settle in the valley and join the burgeoning illegal trade that is controlled mostly by the Israelis and Italians.

Nothing worthy is being mentioned about the government’s stance on the issue, its  action plans to curb cultivation of cannabis, stricter law enforcement on cultivators and smugglers, and/or preventive measures and assistance to locals who are ‘forced’ into the cartels’ trap. Whilst there are countless of NGOs (both locally and internationally funded) and state-run institutions around the Kullu Valley that assist and educates children who are orphans, handicapped and lately the Rajasthani nomadic community, nothing is done for the children who lives in the hashish hamlets. They not only remain in an intricate web of an international cartel ring of smugglers, but are increasingly driven further into places that are physically inaccessible and by all imagination uninhabited by any sizable population of humans to avoid detection by enforcement agencies.

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For my personal account of this photo story, read HERE {warning: mere rantings}

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