Bengaluru :
Government Model Primary Boys School, in Anekal, was started in 1867 by the British. It will turn 150 years next year and should’ve been preserved as a heritage building.
Instead, it was falling to pieces. The floors were cracked and the roof broken. The school lacked basic facilities like chairs and tables, and even toilets.
When Prem Kumari, who was a student here in the early 80s, came back as a teacher in 1994, she was disappointed with the way the school was being maintained.
“For the past 6 years, there had been a sharp fall in the strength of students because of the school’s condition. Since I joined, I have been trying to convince people to save it. Elders of the community and panchayat members wanted to demolish it rather than restore it,” she says.
She approached the B R Sridhar, who was the president of Rotary Bangalore South, and spoke to the other members about the necessity to rennovate this heritage building.
It was adopted by the Club in 2014 and with the help of SABIC, a diversified chemical company, improved its structure and facilities. It has benefited over 218 students in Anekal Taluk, Sarjapura. This is the second school renovated by the club under the Rotary Mission to Teach programme, with SABIC as their CSR partner.
The chemical company’s CSR fund was channelled into the restoration of the school over the last 18 months — replacing the roof, keeping the old design intact; re-plastering the walls; replacing flooring with natural stone flooring; redesigning the courtyard; constructing a separate morning-assembly section; renovation of the kitchen; fixing new gates for the school compound; re-constructing toilets for boys and girls; installing an open-well water pump and purification system for providing drinking water and installation of CCTV security cameras. The refurbished school was inaugurated early this month.
Devendra, a Class 7 student of the school who has been studying there for the past 4 years, says “Earlier our classrooms were bad and there were no toilet facilities either. Now these are better and classes have become interesting with projectors and tablets.”
The student strength is now 200 and but the current infrastructure can serve up to 400 students.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Bengaluru / by Preeja Prasad / March 21st, 2016