Find a place of need, ensure it's suitable, build a school and run it- easy peasy! Well, not quite. Making this process socially, economically and environmentally sustainable is one of our biggest challenges and goals. Sustainability ensures that the projects will still be running and thriving in decades to come, while not being damaging to the environment (in all it's definitions).

Environmental

It has always seemed a bit contradictory to us to have development that actually damages the environment and our future in the process. Why can't we have non-destructive development? Rather than using polluting materials such as cement to build our school we minimise their use and instead use local, natural materials such as stone, mud, clay and wood. We still use cement sometimes because it is the most appropriate material, we just don't think it should be the de-facto choice. Such choices have other positive spin-offs too, a stone building is much cooler in the hot summers than a cement one, and it can be more easily and cheaply repaired too.

We start off by trying to have the very basics on site, but even this can be a challenge. In areas where generations have lived without enough food and water, it takes innovative methods to ensure we're catching enough water to drink, cook, clean and irrigate crops with. Growing enough food on limited land is an even bigger challenge and it can take years of work before the staple elements of the school lunch are being grown on site. But in time this will come to be, providing lunch for the kids, saving money for the school and showing locals how they can maximise their yield in a locally replicable way. We have already shifted our food purchases from outside sources to the village, buying grains at decent prices from the family and friends of the children at our school as of the next harvest.

Most of the villages we work in won't have electricity, which is fine, we're not the ones that are going to introduce it, but if and when it is needed in the schools, we'll use wind and solar power, not fossil fuels. The same already goes for our cooking methods; as long as the sun shines, we will use home made solar cookers to cook our food. When we travel to the places we work, by and large it's all public transport, no shiny white jeeps pumping out CO2. We do now have a 125 cc motor bike for travelling from our home in Swarropganj, a nearby town, to Hunar Ghar, our learning home.

Social

As for the running of the schools themselves, local people are encouraged to take on responsibility for as mush of the day-to-day work as they can. They ensure attendance; hold meetings about the direction in which the school goes, keep the school maintained and build new classrooms as the school expands. Even the 'teachers' are locally sourced and trained, securing a steady supply of initiators promoting learning in the Educate for Life way.

With the people and for the people, that's the way we try to go about doing things. Sadly this isn't always a reality, and is the true face of international development and charity. For instance, our Hunar Ghar is built in a politically charged area and on a few occasions violent threats have been made against us. This forced Ed and Rob who were living in the village at the time to move to a more proximal location. Throughout it all the village remained behind us, and as news of our work filters through to the outside parties trouble makers are finding it harder to incite anger against us.

Economical

Our first school in India opened in September 2007, and became Hunar Ghar, learning home, in March 2008. In this time we had to seriously redress our attitude towards financial issues. Our initial plan, when our experience was less, was to build low-cost schools that would be easily replicable. We have since learned that this is less possible than originally thought. Although the cost of the school is still incredibly low by Western standards, just GBP6000 to build, it is currently too costly for the local community to maintain, so all money comes for donations. The main reason for this is the lack of quality education in the area. All our learning initiators (previously known as teachers, but this is a prescriptive term) are from the village itself. This allows social sustainability but as education in the area has been previously very low, so is the standard they can provide. This means we need to invest in increasing their exposure and experience to quality education, which is what we are doing. Our initiators will go off on regular personal and professional learning sessions, we will have full-time highly qualified learning initiators working alongside the local teachers, and outside training bodies and volunteers will provide a further source of horizon expanding. Over time, the village initiators will learn to and enjoy self development, and from that point on they can only be held back by their own desire to learn.