Our friends' children. These girls don't go to our school, they go to the local government school

One of the handy-men who built the initial stages of Hunar Ghar

Our home sweet home for 6 months. It is usually a cattle shed.

As in all societies, booze can be something of a problem. You will often find people brewing moonshine down by the river or, if they are feeling a little flusher, evidence such as this.

At Educate for Life children are treated like people, so they are welcome, encouraged even, to participate in all aspects of the school. Here a couple of the girls help prepare puris for the New Year celebrations. Children having a great, equal, relationship with the adults means they will interact in more meaningful and life-realistic ways. It also good for the confidence and helps them mature in a sensible way and by being treated as a valued individual person rather than a pupil to be managed, they act in a responsible way that reflects that trust.

Ed with the workforce building Hunar Ghar in 2007

This is Girgi, Bhuvanesh's, one of our teachers, daughter.

A room with a view: one of the school classrooms

Those people that can't sign their name use a thumb-print to confirm receipt of payment

Home to two adults, five children and an assortment of livestock.

A classroom and a water tank at the school

Our new office with a couple of storage cupboards underneath while under construction. The storage cupboards were supposed to be composting chambers for the toilets of the school, but some of the villagers objected to its location.

Deepak, our Hunar Ghar coordinator. From a starting point of no understanding about informal education at all, his grasp two years on is utterly fantastic

The dry season in the village, as seen from on the school site. You re not going to get many crops out of that.

Mmmm. Puris.

A new classroom takes shape

Morning prayer in Bakhel.

On the left Shantilal, one of our teachers, gets ready for New Year 2010 celebrations with the children.

A view over school in India

A conceptual sketch of our school, march 2006.

On site of the first school While the men build, the women ensure they have something to build with.

Some of the children chow down to New Year treats at the make-shift Hunar Ghar cafe.

When it rains it pours. The ford near our school.

A rendering of the underlying school wooden structure. We fell in love with our wood!

A not-so-traditional doll on a traditional bed. The frame is hand cut and the string is hand spun too, from date palm fronds

A view over Hunar Ghar

The kids take a lesson outside

This lady, who lives near Jodhpur, is only 32. That is what working in an India quarry since a kid will do to you. She will most likely be dead in a few years, the silicon from the dust having shredded her lungs. The also do not have enough food to eat, or water to drink. Think twice if you are thinking of buying some nice Indian stone!

Ash (second in from right), the teachers and team in from of one of the classrooms, and kitchen being built in the background. Early 2008.

This is a school holiday- the children were not supposed to have come in, but I arrived at the school to find they had anyway, had got out some instruments and had started playing and dancing!

A Hunar Ghar classroom. The bars make it look a little prison-like! I assure you its not!

We make mortar for our walls out of mud. Get dirt wet, squelch it between your toes, build with it. Local, non-polluting, cheap and accessible. What's the point of using cement when you don't need to? It also makes walls with much better thermal properties - cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

An old an classroom and a work in progress. We are actually (March 2010) knocking the one on the right down - it was built without care, on odd foundations and with next to no quality control. Teddy is an architect I met on the train to Shanghai and he is here to oversee the build of several new rooms, so we can try and avoid these types of issues.

A student, Anil, insists that I take a photo of him playing a monkey. So I did.

The kids paint one of their classrooms using natural pigments and paint brushes they made our by digging up root and crushing the ends to spread out the fibres.

Bhuriya, our friend and school foreman, with his two girls Chetalis and Chitori. Bhuriya was pretty much the guy who made it possible for us to live in the village. He was so welcoming when we first arrived he just took Rob and Ed under his wing and made a foreign place seem like home.

Our kids and Nandlal, a teacher, 'captivated' by Republic Day performances ;)

Some Hunar Ghar children play up to the camera. It is nigh on impossible to take photos at Hunar Ghar without one of these ones being incorporated!

There is barely a straight wall anywhere in Hunar Ghar, here we find one lurking on one of the classrooms built in 2009-2010.

Rob chills by the lake in Udaipur.

Our teacher, nandlalji with our pre-primary children.

What is this? Breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next few months for a family whose crops were destroyed by flooding. It is a weed that grows in the area.

Hunar Ghar under construction

The inside of one of our classrooms. An Educate for Life school yet? No. But give it time...

A motley crew of kids from Bakhel, in their happy days before we built the school! ;)

Puri, halwa and aloo for lunch - chapati, a carrot based sweet and potato. We don't make a habit of giving the children sweet things for lunch, but this was a special celebration.

The harvest comes in, in a traditional manner not seen in England for many a year.

This is the kind of taxi that goes between the rural villages. The can get pretty over crowded as you can see, but this particular one is by no means at maximum capacity! We use these taxis to get around when the bike isn't necessary.

the kids take a lesson outside

Plates dry in the sun after lunch at Hunar Ghar

Matt Barbet and his eyebrows visits us from BBC London, with some of the local children

Ed having a meeting with RBKS and some women from Bakhel, September 2006. This was very early days - that stupid look on my face is me not having a clue what is going on around me!

One of our classrooms.

Holi is the Indian equivalent of the spring festival. In the villages, the grow these bskets of corn in the dark, then on the day dance with them in the night-time on the girls' heads. The taller and yellower the corn shoots, the better.

Lunchtime at the school

The kids set up a cafe outside to celebrate new Year 2010

Triangulating the site. We staked string into the ground, then highlighted it on the computer for clarity. Using this triangulation we achieved accurate dimensions and elevation differences for the site, with which we decided where was best to build the rooms.

A roof section is tested for size

On the hunt for a place to build our school back in August 2006.

Looking up into the center of our octagonal ceilings.

The third classroom, December 2007

Hunar Ghar classroom

Republic Day in India is on the 26th of January. Here some of our kids perform for the gathered dignitaries. It is all a bit formal and contrived these days, but we are working on changing all that.