2008 South India Programs

GLP volunteer Milena Lurie and her friends aim to establish libraries in rural India!

The idea of running a book drive to create libraries for rural India children may be fate or it might be serendipity for Milena Lurie. In August 2007 she and her mother visited South Africa for a short vacation. Interested in the people of that nation, they held several conversations about the challenges facing people who had to live under systems of exclusion and discrimination. In one evening's discussion of the system of apartheid a family friend mentioned the plight of the outcastes in India. This conversation came up as Milena and her mother had mentioned their hopes to visit India for their next summer vacation.

In following up about the Dalits, Milena would discover that in India, the traditional fourfold caste system, called varna, consisted of brahmins (the priestly caste), kshatriyas (the warrior caste), and vaishyas (the trading caste) - all of whom are considered twice-born and are allowed to read the holy texts. The fourth group, shudras (the servile caste) were not allowed to read the holy books. Dalits were an even lower caste, the so called "outcaste" or "untouchable" groups, whose very shadow was considered polluting to caste hindus.

In a stroke of serendipity, another family friend mentioned that his daughter had had a really rewarding experience by collecting books and helping to set up libraries for several schools in South Africa (through GLP). This gave Milena the idea to see if she could do a similar project for students in India.

With a positive answere from GLP, Milena then had to identify where to locate her project. As GLP already had an interest in the South India state of Tamil Nadu she decided to follow up on an NGO that had been favorably reccommended to her. The Integrated Rural Development Centre (IRDC) is a secular non-profit organisation that focuses its activities on the rural areas of Gandarvakottai--a sub-district of some 37 village in the Pudukottai district (click HERE for map) of Tamil Nadu state in South India. IRDC supports children from three to five years old in early childhood learning centres and works with ten local government run primary schools where they provide supplementary education and coaching with the goal of preventing students from dropping out from school.

The IRDC also runs the Lady Lynn Joyful Home--providing shelter as well as a nurturing environment to orphaned or neglected children from the villages of Pudukottai District.

A library for the orphanage's school will be created as well as for a half dozen surrounding schools!

Here is the FLYER that Milena used to promote the program. The response has been incredible! Students from as far away as the El Rodeo School in Beverly Hills, California all supported the India book drive. with the special support of Scholastic and the Walt Disney companies we are now up to 35,000 for the project!

Right now Milena is fund raising to cover the cost of shipping the collected books to India as well as the cost to create each school library. If you wish to support her project, please coordinate your donations with Milena at crumpett1@aol.com. Donations can be sent to:

c/o Philadelphia Eagles
One Nova Care Way
Philadelphia PA 19145

Milena hopes to have the books on their way to India by April 2008 and she will be visiting the site to volunteer at the libraries later in th esummer.

Help Support the GLP—Human Rights Education Movement of India Initiative

GLP will be working with the Human Rights Education Movement of India (and its program at the Delta Community College ) to facilitate the creation of a modern nursing library at the Delta Community College in support of their three-year certificate program and the one-year basic training program. We also hope to create a multimedia center for use by the students.

GLP also plans to develop small reference libraries in strategic elementary and high schools in the various clusters over the next decade to support the goals of the Human Rights Education Movement of India.

Finally, GLP anticipates having volunteers visit these sites over time to assist in a variety of ways via our “Global Learning Expeditions.”