Nirvana School
Nirvana school was formally opened in December 1994, by Mrs Vinodini Samani after the sudden death of her husband. This personal loss continually inspired her in developing and providing a valuable service by educating the children from the nearby rural villages.
The school is situated in Kottakuppam, near Pondicherry, which is a small city located on the South Eastern coast of India.
Nirvana School is committed to the social, emotional and intellectual growth of their students. They are providing an English medium education, blended with the moral, religious and cultural values of India. Their main aim and mission is to prepare the students to be enthusiastic and self motivated learners throughout life, by providing them with a unique education within a happy and healthy environment.
Nirvana High School & Adult Education Project
Through various donors, Nirvana have been able to purchase a piece of land close to the present school to enable the expansion of the school to include a high school and educational classes for the local community. This will provide excellent opportunity for not only more local children but also adults to improve their future prospects. Fortunately, the land already had some building shells, that could be refurbished to suit the needs of the school, which will dramatically reduce the costs for this expansion.
The Nirvana school project is a very exciting project for the school and for Hope and Evolution.
We had previously supported the refurbishment of one of the blocks and it is currently being utilised, for adults classes in computing, english, tailoring and typing.
The next stage was building 3 new classrooms, to be used for the 9th and 10th Standard classes (equivalent to UK 'O' levels). In the past, there was not the space in the school to accommodate the 10th Standard. Now, the children will be able to complete their high schooling till 'O' levels standard. This not only means that more children will receive a higher level of education and therefore enable them to have better employment opportunities, but that the school can also take in more children. We were able to fund these 3 new classrooms with the generous help of a group of volunteers from Computacenter UK, in association with Charity Challenge UK, who gave up two weeks of their valuable time to travel to Pondicherry and spend their days laying bricks and tiles, painting, plastering and moving sand! Not to mention making a huge difference to many children's futures and also making a huge impression on the local workers who worked alongside the group.
The next phase will be to build more classrooms and to have a 'Secondary High School' - equivalent to UK 'A' levels.
We also hope to rebuild a sports field for the school and are currently looking for corporate groups who would be interested in supporting this project and possibly sending a group of there staff to assist with the challenge.