The next Step of Charity Work: Extending Support to Children in local Schools

I was happy about the plans for the Yoga Teacher Training that we were making in February 2005 and, positive as I usually am, I just decided that this would be a year for a lot of new, good things to come. Indeed, just a short time after our German friend had left, we received a few requests and what followed was the next step in our children charity projects.

At the Ashram we had already a long time ago started accommodating some teenagers who wanted to learn Sanskrit and the scriptures in Vrindavan but whose parents were either living far away or could not afford raising them. They lived at the Ashram and went to a Sanskrit school for learning the scriptures and the Sanskrit language. Everybody in the surrounding thus knew that we were supporting children and their education.

My best friend’s sister one day came by to talk to us. She was principal in a primary school in the center of Vrindavan. She had lately been approached by parents who wanted to admit their children to her school but who could not afford the school fees. Moved by their pleas, she now tried to find a way to let them come to class without having to pay. These families could just not afford it but unfortunately her school could not afford accepting them all for free either! This is how she had come to us now, asking whether we could help.

She was not the only one with such a problem. In our neighbourhood, close to the Ashram, there was another primary school, a quite small one, where children of the surrounding went to study. They, too, had been asked by parents for a chance to get education for their children. Knowing about the teenagers at the Ashram, they came to ask us for support for these children and thus for their school.

We did not need to consider much whether we would like to help. Of course we did but the question was how much we could do. We did not want to give a one-time-donation for one year and the year after those children would not be able to go to school again! So we knew, if we started now, we would want to support them on a long term! And this is how we decided to pay the school fees for about 50 children, 25 children in each of the two schools.

It was the most beautiful feeling to take this decision and then visit the schools once these children had started going there. I had always believed in helping those in need and being able to give this support to children strengthened this belief even further. Children, after all, are the future of this universe!