2013 - the Year in which we built the first Floor of our Charity School

With the end of 2013, we were able to end a big project of the whole year: finally, our school has not only a ground floor but also a first floor with five beautiful classrooms and five new toilets. Let me tell you how this came about.

You may know already that we started sponsoring children in primary schools in Vrindavan already many years ago, after I had come out of the cave. In 2007 we bought the building next to the Ashram and opened a Kindergarten ourselves. It started in two rooms and with twenty children. Slowly, the number of children and the number of rooms grew. When the first fifth-graders had finished their school year, we did not have space for another class and sent them to study in another school. It was our wish to have the possibility to teach them here but the main restriction was the one of space!

We shared our idea with friends and well-wishers, making plans and thinking about how it could be realized. Finally, at the beginning of 2013, a loving, generous friend helped us to realize our dream. I am not sure whether he would like to be named and so I won’t disclose his identity but I know he will be reading this article and that’s how I want to thank him in this way once more in the name of the Ashram family and the children!

The work started quickly, with building the new walls for the rooms on top of the old roof. Simultaneously, there had to be built a new roof over the courtyard at the entrance, as this roof would be the floor of one more room upstairs. With several workers busy there, the walls rose in nearly no time and we could soon present the first pictures of the progress. The building needed some strong pillars to hold the extra weight, so they cemented them into the floor as well.

Funnily enough, the contractor decided to first build the new rooms and then the stairs. This meant that the workers could not carry up the bricks – instead, a few of them were throwing the bricks up from below and the others were catching above! We however had to climb up the ladder in order to take pictures. That ladder seemed to get more and more shaky every day! But we made it up there until finally there were stairs to walk up!

By the summer, the basic structure was there to admire. And then the monsoon rains started early. There was no other way than to interrupt the work for some days, as the rain was flooding down from the skies, soaking everything and obviously not letting any work get done. Once the water dried up a bit and there were days with sun however, work continued. Walls were plastered, the marble floor was laid, electricity lines were added, plumbing work was done, tiles were laid out and the windows arrived to be installed.

Around Diwali the school was nearly ready. The doors finally came and were fixed as well as the air-conditioners, the painters started working on making the different rooms colourful and the colourful plastic had arrived which we wanted to decorate the wall of the stairs with – which is also going to protect the wall a bit from dirty hands rubbing along, something you cannot avoid!

In the past weeks we were then only fighting the Indian phenomenon of not properly finishing their work. The blackboards had been ordered but in spite of repeated emails and calls, we did not get an update for when we would actually receive them! The school should get its name visibly on a hoarding on its outside wall – but the printer argued about the format of data he needed. The painter took ages just to clean up and do the finishing touch. It was just the details that were left.

But in the end, it was done! The school is now ready, it is shining in new colours, the classrooms have blackboards and new furniture, the old classrooms were re-painted and the new school bell is on the wall.

Now there is enough space for our 180 students to study and we even have room for more in the next years! We are happy and thankful for this opportunity for us to help even more children in future!

Here you can see all pictures of the complete construction process