Christ King School in Katchur :

Background :
Christ King (CK) School began out of a need to provide schooling for the children in Asha Bhavan and Arul Anbukudil. Many are from extremely deprived family situations, and do not easily integrate into mainstream government schools. They require extra attention and care, and it was with this in mind that CK School was founded. At the beginning the goal was to provide an education that could bring the children’s skills on par with others in order to reintegrate them into a regular school.
The school was built in 1992 as a primary school for 100 students. However, CK has expanded to fill a gap in the educational system in Katchur and surrounding villages, and in 2002 it added a high school up to 10th istandard. It serves the underprivileged – along with the children from Arul Anbukudil and Asha Bhavan, families from backward castes and scheduled tribes also take advantage of the opportunity to send their children here. Today CK School has about 450 children.

Activities : and Impact During school hours qualified teachers engage the children in an active learning experience. In addition to the regular subjects (Language, Math, Social and Natural Sciences, Physical Education), they coach the children in moral values, and encourage them in sports, dance, contests, and debates. Because the children come from very low socio-economic and sometimes illiterate or abusive backgrounds, they require more attention than average. Teachers respond to each child on a one-to-one basis, encouraging him or her to go beyond where they are.

The teachers keep a very close eye on children who express anger or act out in other undesirable ways, often giving them extra love and attention, and tasks that help to develop self esteem and make them feel special. Slowly negative attitudes diminish so they can participate in the school community. Children not academically inclined are appreciated for what they can do, and contribute in the best way they can. When they go home for a holiday parents are often happily surprised by how much more confident, polite, and helpful their children have become.

The impact CK is having on the children and community is strong. More children than ever before are attending school. And, thanks to the teachers’ involvement with their students’ families, more than ever before are completing 10th standard. Also contributing to this success is the fact that the school’s vans pick up and drop off children from the Surrounding willages. This means that parents do not have to worry about their young children going to and from school. The vans have been particularly helpful for the girls many of whom used to drop out upon reaching adolescence, in part because of the need to travel over unsafe territory.

Funding for Christ King School is currently provided by the general pool. Additional monies are needed to bring the teachers’ salaries up to a standard wage and to make repairs to the infrastructure (school building and the vans). Recently the Tamil Nadu government has started to require that primary and secondary school buildings are separate structures. This regulation is the result of huge damages and causalities caused by fire in a school at Kumbakonam in Tamilnadu. For Share and Care’s CK School, it also means that a completely new primary school building must be built very soon in order to accommodate this law.