Siragu Montessori School |
Siragu, a unit of Suyam Charitable Trust, is a school that is loosely based on the Montessori method of education but has evolved and developed its own innovative curriculum that best caters to the special needs of its students. It is located at Palavedu Pettai, very close to the Indian Air Force base at Avadi, Chennai. Siragu, the Tamil word for ‘wings’, was started in the year 2001 to provide quality education, completely free of cost, for first generation learners, such as the children of slum dwellers and children belonging to the community that survives on alms. Initially, the school faced a lot of resistance from the local community because education was viewed as an unnecessary extravagance, which deprived the family of a valuable source of income that the children would have generated. However, Siragu persisted with its vision and now has evolved into a community that includes people in and around Palavedu Panchayat, with children from families who have been begging, scavenging, farming, pig farming, manufacturing or working in brick kilns for generations. OPEN which had identified the lack of education as a significant obstacle in improving the lives of these children, who were otherwise stuck in a vicious circle of child labor and poverty, saw a very committed organization in Siragu. This inspired us to support Siragu and we decided to contribute to the school’s operational expense from Jan 2010, which we found was the best way to achieve our intended objective of ensuring that the children received a quality education as well as a healthy lifestyle. However, OPEN has moved beyond simple funding, and has strived to create a world class system in place by designing effective reporting structures to track and monitor the outflow of precious capital, which in turn has helped the school to identify key control elements that enable it to operate efficiently. OPEN conducts proficiency audit amongst randomly chosen children to ensure that there is minimal Design-Delivery gap, apart from regular financial audits. The School Profile:
Needs of Siragu met by OPEN so far:
A few achievements of Siragu students:
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