‘Ekal Vidyalaya’ or ‘one teacher school’ is a unique movement in the world. This is a social project and not a charity. A school is established in remote, mainly tribal parts of India. Local person is trained to teach in local language. On average a school has 30 children. The sponsor can sponsor the whole school for not more than 11 dollars a week.

One can hardly think of a social project where a dollar is stretched so far.

More than 26,000 schools are already operating. All the details of this project are available on website (www.ekal.org). The sponsors can monitor progress of their sponsored schools via this website which is regularly updated.

The sponsorship goes only towards education, but after being equipped with education, the villagers are empowered for overall development of the whole village. We encourage you to adopt a school in India and contribute to the renaissance of India by creating the opportunities for our rural and tribal children to develop and catch up with the developed India. Two or more people, or a group can collectively sponsor a school also.

An Ekal Vidyalaya school operates on NZ $ 540 a year (for the year ending March 2009). They are able to maintain less than $2 per day cost because it works with low overhead budgets, and the time/efforts of the villagers and volunteers account for two thirds of cost of running the school. Most schools expect to be self- sufficient within 5 – 7 years.

In other words all these schools expect is a hand up and not a hand out.

Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of New Zealand is a registered charitable organization. Please contact us for more details.

*A donor can set up weekly direct debit of NZ $11 per week for convenience, provided the balance to make up the $540 for the current year is paid in March. Schools are allocated in April for the forthcoming year after the full donation has been received.