St Clare's Primary and Kindergarten School, Road No. 4, Banjara Hills.

  This is the December 2011 newsletter to all our MSF School sponsors and supporters to thank you for your help.

Please write back to us and tell us what you think and to help support the school click here...
Picture at the top:
Welcome to our gap-year-volunteer Vin Shankar from Bristol, his superb diction and cheerful style is already proving to be a great asset - there he is standing next to the Principal of St Clare's Kindergarten, Baba Rodrigues, right at the back. Recently we were invited by St Clare's, just round the corner from where we live, to be the Guests of Honour at International Childrens Day. As part of that we trialled our new powerpoint version of 'The Star-belly Sneetches' and it was a huge success.

Thank you to all those who kindly supported our 26.2 mile run across the streets and bridges of all five boroughs of New York. We had a few mishaps including lost baggage (leading to new kit and much chafing!) and a dodgy meal (which ensured we were both depleted of energy for reasons which need not be gone into....). That, coupled with never quite getting over jet lag meant this truly was a marathon effort.

However the thought that with your support we raised over £2 500 for the school kept us going and made the experience totally worthwhile. The money raised is going to ensure the salaries of the teachers are covered for the remainder of this academic year. Thank you for supporting us, but most importantly thank you for supporting the school.

Recently the school featured prominently in a local television report of a party given by Microsoft employees on International Childrens Day. This was courtesy of our link with ASHA International, a Hyderabad educational charity run by young Indian software engineers.

Our Principal, Lavanya, gave a good account of the school and the children were a credit to all of us. Please click here to see it.

Encouraged by Sharen McDonald of Canada, and Caroline Russell and Hazel George of Oxford UK, we have started a school library. Our first books are the Dr Seuss series about The Cat In The Hat - very well known in India, and even available in Hindi (but not in Telugu).

As part of that idea, and to reach some of the younger children, Vin is converting some of the stories into powerpoint and showing them with the original English words while Ramola explains some of the tricky bits in Telugu to a local kindergarten. It's a combination that works very well.

Introducing our Librarian Pavithra: About Pavithra:- she teaches all subjects for U.K.G (Upper Kindergarden), She completed her 10th level... after that she got married with Mr.P.Krishna who is a good supporter for her teaching; Pavithra wants to have her higher studies also to get improved in teaching. She is happy that she got a chance to teach in MS Foundation School.

She is also happy that she is going to learn about computers and it could help her to improve more and more.... Now she got an good opportunity to learn English speaking also, because she is the one who is holding Library .

We have started a computer course for all our teachers - ten weeks of one hour sessions on a Sunday. Electricity and Internet connections are very prone to failure at school, so I have converted my apartment in Valley View into a computer centre with five laptops. Our seven teachers have four excellent Tutors on hand - Ramola, Vennela, Sandhya of Holloways.org and Vin the Volunteer.
Have you got a colour printer? Why not print a couple of copies of this newsletter (just hit Control-P) and pass them to your friends and relatives? Even if they don't wish to help the school directly, they will surely be interested to know what you do.