Visit 18 January, 2019
In addition to attending two days of the sports event at Hunar Ghar, Chris went on a journey (including a somewhat treacherous mountain road, miles of unmade roads and some other unexpected challenges!) to one of the latest projects in which The Foundation has become involved.
RO Water System
Through the very generous donation given in the name of Sandy Wu, Beeda is being provided with a new Reverse Osmosis (“RO”) water purification system, similar to that which was installed at Hunar Ghar just over a year ago, albeit with a larger capacity than the Hunar Ghar system.
Sandy was particularly keen for us to find a water project and, with the help of Educate for Life and RBKS, we were introduced to Beeda, which had such a need.
Beeda is a residential school and orphanage in Jhadol, Rajasthan currently catering to the needs of about 450 girls [photo of school]. As the school/orphanage has expanded with more girls being taken in, they have had to extend their kitchen facilities. The donation has, therefore, enabled Beeda to buy and install the new RO system. The work on the kitchen is nearly complete [photo of kitchen] and the RO system should be installed in the next two weeks or so.
There is building work going on (paid for by one of Beeda’s supporters, The Embassy of Japan) to provide additional accommodation and classrooms, as Beeda is expecting to take in more girls very soon [photo of construction].
As a result, they have need for sponsors for 50 girls and classroom furniture for 12 classrooms.
The classroom furniture will cost about Rupees 25,000 (about £275/AED1,300/US$350) per classroom.
Annual sponsorship per girl is about Rupees 50,000 (about £550/AED2,600/US$700). For that, each girl receives four sets of clothes; shoes and slippers; three meals a day, 52 weeks a year (over 1,000 meals a year); somewhere to live; and education, including English language and IT lessons. Not bad for about £10/AED50/US$13 per week!
Beeda offers the girls education up to age 18, when those with higher education potential are helped with getting into college; and then welcomes some of them back after college, providing a two year post-grad teacher training course for those who wish to become teachers.