St. Arnold’s Ambadochar

Vision

To transform our world into a just, equitable and harmonious place, where God reigns.

Mission

To provide holistic and integral development to students enabling them to grow as person of character, competence, conscience, compassion and commitment and who will take their rightful place in the society as agents of change ushering in a new world order that is open, inclusive and sensitive to the poor and marginalized.

How it all started:

Mostly the people are illiterate and ignorant and far away from the main stream of development.  Parents cannot afford to send their children to school because children are engaged in agricultural work, cattle rearing taking care of their siblings, household work etc.  It is disheartening to see that only 3% of their income is used for the education of their children.  Village primary schools have only one teacher and one classroom.  The teacher is supposed to teach the children from 1^st STD to Vth  STD.  The lone teacher has to do all the Govt. surveys. Even when he/she goes to take salary, the school has to remain closed Moreover migration during the months of March-April force the children to leave the exams.  In the villages adults literacy rate is only 6.1%.  Literacy rate among children is 40.44% which shows a marked improvement still even today very few manage to pass Xth STD.

Most of the diseases are attributed to the displeasure of gods.  So generally they go the village quacks for treatment.  The main sickness in the village is Malaria. Malnutrition and Tuberculosis are the other important problems.  Other common sicknesses are seasonable such as Diarrhoea, Pneumonia, sore eyes etc.  It is surprised to note that they spend very little money for treatment of the sickness.  Because of the superstition they hardly go to hospitals.  People approach the village quacks for treatments.  They also use home remedies and herbs for treatment. Due to lack of awareness, the immunization in the village is very poor, Even though there is Public Health Sub Center, health needs of the people cannot be met by it health services.

Women take responsibility to run the household and share a great deal of agricultural work.  The tribal women are mostly confined to their houses and fields.  They work 12 to 14 hours per day to support their families.  Literacy rate among women is very low.  Hardly any woman can read and write in the village.  Even though women have no voice in decision making with regard to political matters, they express their opinion in the case of marriages, birth ceremonies etc.  They enjoy their accepted role in the family.  Most of them are even unaware of national and international movements of globalization and liberalization which is going to affect the adversely and their meager resources.

Recently, the Society of the Divine Word felt the need of opening the new school for our tribal children. The place is very much rural and remote.  People of the place are very poor, illiterate, and belong to the poor section of the society. We have around 150 children in our hands. They come from different other tribal villages.  They are showing lot of interest in studies and we felt that there is lot of   improvement in them. Yes, we see there are rays of learning new things in them, such as they started reading, and still some of them can understand few lines of English. Our children also started wearing descent cloths and the discipline wise we feel that they are showing good improvement.  Yet, there are many expectations from children as well as parents. The council of the school, the teachers and staff also suggested that we need few toilets for our children. Since, school doesn’t have any facility of it. Most of them go out and do their personal business on the roadside. There is no privacy for them. When our children parents come to drop their children in our school and if they want to visit toilet we don’t have it. Many times we get some guest priests and teachers from different school for school to give talk to our children, but when it comes to toilets we have some difficulties. The village is so poor that there are no toilets at all, but by building toilets in our school we would like to create some sort of awareness and discipline in their life. By building this toilets the girls will have separate toilet session, hence there will be some privacy and order.

At present, Fr. Pancratius SVD is in-charge of the school and we have place to build few toilets for our children, which would bring some changes in our school. So, we   ask your helping hand, your kind support and your good heart to contribute your generosity to us. So that our children have a future coloured with joy, happiness, development and success.  Therefore, it is an urgent need to have a few toilets

How it all started: