| For a few years now,
we have been interacting with schools around the
national park. It started with a trip we took to
Rancha village, for some architectural inspiration
from its beautiful mud brick houses and tiled roofs. |
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On our walk around
the village, we passed one truly rundown structure
– the most ramshackle of all the houses we’d
seen. To our astonishment, the guide told us it
was the village school.
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Part of the building
had no roof and the plaster had fallen off long
ago. But the inhabitants, 85 school children and
3 teachers, were getting on with their work, some
in the verandah of the building and others under
the trees close by.
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| We walked in and received
a cheerful and raucous greeting from the children.
Their teachers were less lively – in summer
it was burning hot under the broken asbestos roof,
and when the rains came the school had to close
because water poured in. |
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| As we visited other
villages around the reserve, we discovered that
most village schools shared a similar plight: broken
down buildings and almost no infrastructure. Despite
the conditions, many of the teachers were clearly
dedicated, working hard to keep classes going. The
children laughed, played and studied under the dripping
roofs and shady trees, full of the kind of easy
cheer that seems absent in our own more comfortable
lives. |
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| But there was something
else missing. The children and teachers lived in
close proximity to the tiger. Thousands of people
came from around the world to see their home and
think about how to save their forest. And yet, they
had themselves barely had the chance to see this
tiger that everyone talked about, or to meet the
varied people who visited their Bandhavgarh. |
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| Faced with this anomaly,
we at Anant Van have decided to adopt a school and
commit our own time and energy to it. We believe
that we can enrich the lives of students and teachers
by making them aware of how precious their forest
is, to the world and to them. We feel that raising
their awareness will help them make better decisions.
And as our guests interact with the children, they
in turn will be better informed about the ground
realities of Bandhavgarh. |
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| We encourage all our
guests to spend some time at the schools, sharing
stories or even teaching the students. Along the
way, we are working to improve the learning environment
and make our schools better. We invite you to join
with us in strengthening this partnership. |
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