Current challenges for prayer and financial help:

• In keeping with our mission of providing the highest quality of education to those who cannot afford it, we charge less than 50 % of the real cost per student. Our biggest concern is that we are running on a monthly deficit of about $1200 in our Kesnand village school. If we could get 40 regular monthly donations of $30 each coming in to cover this deficit as we work towards sustainability, that would be wonderful and a huge burden shared for us. All of our students pay a minimal monthly fee in order to encourage ownership and valuing of their education.
• Staff housing in Kesnand village or Wagholi for staff carrying the vision of the development of the school.
• For various reasons, we have faced much difficulty in getting legal ownership of the10 acres of land on a hill donated to the school by its founder. We are trying to solve this problem by selling this hill land and instead buying 4 acres down on the ground level, so that we can build our school closer to the community and families we serve. This process may take time, so we urgently need to raise about $500,000 to be able to buy 4 acres and start building the final school building as soon as possible, until we are able to eventually sell the hill land.
• Finding qualified teachers with good English is very hard and this is why we want to raise the professional standard of our own teachers, pay them better, as well as start our own teacher training college. If you know of teachers who could come to help that is always a blessing.
• We need an outdoor covered area, a playground, and new bathroom facilities for our students.
• Some students do need full sponsorship in the school and in the coming year we want to reach out especially to girl students. (our boy: girl ratio is currently 2:1)
• We urgently need a vehicle for the village school as some children are travelling in a pick-up truck. For rural education transport is an imperative. A school bus costs up to $30,000

If you can help raise funds for Gyanankur please contact us.

Information for Donors:
Contributions can be made by credit card or cheque. We strive to be transparent in our budget and are happy to give an account of how your contribution is spent, upon request.

International Donors:
If you would like to donate please contact gyanankur AT gmail DOT com for further information.

Indian Donors:
1. Make cheques payable to “Resurrection Education Society” and mail to:

Melinda Parker
Hon.Director, Gyanankur School
P-18 Konark Campus
Viman Nagar, Pune
411014. Maharashtra
India

2. Direct Deposit into our Trust Bank Account: The Resurrection Education Society
Bank of India Account number : 051220100001285
Please note we are working towards getting 80G tax deductibility for Indian donors but do not have it as yet.

Gyanankur is looking for dynamic passionate people who are willing to dream, experiment, learn and partner with us. As we are in a pioneering setting those who are flexible and willing to adapt cross culturally are invited. We love to have Indian volunteers as well. Volunteers need to be willing to work alongside our faith-based management (Resurrection Education Society).

Various short and long term internship positions are open for people with education training and also volunteers with other skills such as administration, development and practical things like woodwork, art, sports and music. Maybe you have a skill you can teach a few landless labourers to help them generate a better income in the community as part of our development goals. (For example: We are hoping to set up our own toys and furniture making in the future, for which we need trainers.) Please note that there will be a screening process for volunteers.

We need preprimary and primary teachers to come and work alongside our teachers mentoring and modeling new ways of doing things.

We need help with teacher development. For our planned teacher training in June 2010 we need skilled teacher trainers and those who can provide quality modules of teacher training into our curriculum.

We need people to help raise the standard of English both for our teachers, our children and their parents.

Publicity and fundraising:
It would help us tremendously to have people in different locations and nations to partner with us in finding sponsorships or other resources for our schools. We need people to help research funding options, speak to contacts you may have in the corporate world or your church, build our partnerships, help with small amounts of admin outside of India. (Eg: If one person finds three donors to make a regular monthly contribution ) Just being willing to encourage people to look at our website can be so helpful. We would love contacts with groups like churches, foundations, etc.

Adopt a specific project:
We would love to start school lunches, sewing classes, nutrition and health training. We need specific money to set these up. These projects may vary from time to time. Please write to us for more details.

Sponsor a child:
Please note: We are trying to keep administration simple, as sponsorship of an individual child with photos and correspondence is complex, costly and time consuming. Thus, instead of being paired with a specific child, your monthly donation will go as a first priority to cover the costs of those children who cannot pay any fees at all, and then the remaining will be distributed to the costs of the other students who are also subsidized, since none can afford the full costs of their education.

Collect resources for the school:
We are keen to get a great library, readers, maps, resources, blocks, building and play equipment, sports and gym equipment, art and craft materials, quality clothes for our slum and orphanage children, etc. We have found that transporting materials between nations is costly. We would love to partner with a school or other group in different locations who can take on the task of periodically filling and sending a shipping container to us. This is the most cost effective way, so that resources can be collected from different individuals who may have supplies to send us, and shipped to us in one go.

Developing a resource pool for teachers:
We need practical materials, sample lessons, activity ideas, useful and inspiring articles, movie clips to inspire teachers.

Encouragement:
Your prayers, encouragement, notes to the teachers, wisdom or ideas that can help us are most welcome. It helps us persevere when we know there are people standing with us from afar in these different ways.

Entrepreneurs:
We need people with business skills and drive to help us develop long-term sustainability. We also have some specific business ideas related to working with children that we think could make a large profit from the wealthier part of India that could be fed back into our low-resource schools. Although business skills are not always valued in the NGO world, we recognise that the growing trend of corporate/NGO partnerships bear a huge potential to have a large scale impact.