Every penny of every donation goes directly to Hunar Ghar, where it then contributes to one of five broad areas:

Day to day expenses

• Children’s books, pens, pencils, toys, paints and all sorts of materials, as well as those days where we have special events, such as on Independence Day where we buy extra materials for children to make sweets or hire a microphone for speeches
• The children’s lunch each day  (Cost: £90 per month, or 4.5p per child per day).
• Teachers’ and local staff’s wages. That is, 8 teachers, two cooks, on odd-job man and one person who brings water and keeps the place tidy.
• Firewood – we cook by firewood at the school, and get a tractor load delivered every few months to do so (Cost: £7 per month).

Investment in infrastructure

• Improving the school environment such as tree planting. Not only does this make the school look nicer, it also in time will help keep the place cooler and as we’ve planted lots of fruit trees, will keep the children busy in harvest time! It’s the children who plant and learn about all the trees and their importance so it’s good educationally, and I suppose you could say it carbon offsets some of our energy use too.
• Internet connection for our team in India so we can keep in touch with them more easily. It is also a great learning resource for the team. (Cost: £5 per month). We also say to Deepak that he should reclaim the cost of his mobile phone calls related to the charity (about £3 a month), but he prefers to not claim that expense. The laptop we use was given to us by my uncle.

Investment in people

• Donations pay for staff capacity building which is essential to the development of the children’s education. For example, we send teachers on exposure trips to visit, learn from and share with other schools, or to go to inspirational places such as solar-cooking and zero-waste meetings.

Wider developmental investment related to the school

• such as putting in a bore hole for water, developing better farming techniques etc

Things that enable all this to happen

• Supporting RBKS
• legal fees to secure to school land
• Ash bought a motorbike with his own money for the school, but donations pay for its fuel and maintenance. The bike is really important to us for getting more done at the school as public transport is intermittent and over-crowded. We use the bike to visit people and shops and to get to school each day, as school starts two hours before the first bus might arrive. We do of course make sure we use the bus instead when possible, and always walk short distances rather than ride.