Rajkumar and Preeti, his wife, were the first teachers to join Hunar Ghar from outside of the local vicinity when they moved from Agra to join the team. There are more people than jobs in India and theirs was a fairly typical story – contacting lots of NGOs in the hope of finding work, and being prepared to move considerable distances to take it up. They contacted RBKS who recommended them for the Hunar Ghar job.

As with all new staff, they came to us for an initial 1 month trial. Over the years we have noticed that the village can be quite an intense place to get used to. The one month trial serves for both us and any new person to have period in which we can see how they cope, and then make a more informed decision of suitability.

After their first day at Hunar Ghar Rajkumar was ready to leave. He was ready to leave after an hour there. Explaining to him that we didn’t want a positive or negative decision for a couple of weeks, just the opportunity to him and to us to see how he could come, he only just agreed to stay. 4 days later he fell in love with Hunar Ghar. The initial shock of a new place and culture had died down, the other teachers seemed friendly and they like how they were treated decently by all other members of the Hunar Ghar community.