There's not much history of education in the area where we built our school, that's why we built it there after all. But it means that there is also a shortage of people educated enough to be teachers; Ash and I found ourselves with a bit of a chicken and egg situation on our hands.

Something that is important to us at Educate for Life is building local capacity at all opportunities, it makes sense on so many levels that it just seems the most obvious thing to do. If we employ a local teacher, say from Bakhel, the village where our school is built, then first up they speak the local language, which is obviously pretty useful. Another quite obvious point is that they also understand the local customs and cultures, which can vary as much as the language does in India and are important to get right. Then there is the fact that we want our schools to compliment and be woven into the societies where we build them, and there is no better way than doing that than with everyone being local.

Employing local people is also a good confidence booster. The kinds of people we work with have taken a bit of a kicking over the years - be it the British taxing them half to death, then pervasive caste system which brands them as sub-human worthless people, or aid agencies coming and making them dependent on them - so it is nice to show a bit of faith in a few local adults as well as the children, and stand by them even if they screw up sometimes.

Employing local people also works on the sustainability front too, and we can keep the staff turn-over lower, meaning the school can age like wine in an oak barrel rather than a bland, new stainless-steel one.

It turns out then that employing local people is good for many reasons. Ethically nice? Tick. Sustainable? Tick. Economically sensible? Tick. Good for broader and deeper development? Tick. Convenient? Tick. Well then, I'll think you'll agree that it is a good thing to do. And of course it is a good old wage-paying job, which is a good thing in a community where they are in hot demand but low in supply.

It does go against the grain of one part of our philosophy though, and that is diversity. So what did we do? Employ non-local people of course! Wait,wait! I'll tell you why that isn't contradictory:

We employed our first teacher from outside the village when the school had been open for over 18 months. In those 18 months a lot of what I describe above has been covered. In fact, to introduce outside staff at this point goes to further enhance the positive aspects of the local teachers. The local teachers by this point have learnt a lot of new things, but it has all be a bit isolated. To bring in outsiders puts them in a position of heightened responsibility, and they respond as such - acting more responsibly. Because our school is a little different, they then had to share with the new teachers the different way we do things which helped them look more closely at what they do and scrutinise it a little. New people bring new ideas, and the sum becomes greater than the whole as discussions are had and new things learn. We balanced the new outside teachers by taking two from just the next village along - same culture and language but not 'Bakhelites' - and two from considerable further away - some language difficulties, but fresh ideas and perspectives, and it has been great for the children to teach the teachers how to speak the local language!