Books Headed to the Himalayas!

We are busy packing our first six boxes of books for the library at the Himalayan Public School in Uttarkhand, India.

The school is a private, English-speaking school serving the rural poor. There are about 30 underpaid teachers, an excellent administration, and 525 wonderful children. The children at the Himalayan Public School generally come from rural, subsistence farming families earning less that $2 per day.

Our partner in the project, the Himalayan Education Foundation, has been working with the school for three years and reports on the great progress the school is making:

“When we started working with them in 2008, they had 8 grades and fewer than 20 books on one small shelf! Now they have 12 grades - but still very few books. In spite of this, they have recently won an award for Excellence from the State of Uttarkhand-- their students had the highest scores in the state on the standardized high school tests! They can do amazing things with very little.”