Shanti Bhavan Part 2

 The school itself is located in rural Tamil Nadu close to the Karnataka border about 2 hours outside of Bangalore. In the rural area, you will mostly find small villages with agriculture as the main focus.

The school itself is quite nice and provides teachers with their own living quarters with all meals provided by the kitchen staff. All of the water on the campus is filtered and potable. Although there is not enough water pressure to take showers, the school has a solar unit to both generate power for the class building as well as heat the water for washing. 

 The school campus is well landscaped with palm trees all around.

There is one school building that has all of the classrooms for grades 3rd-12th. The preschool, kindergarten, 1st and 2nd graders have school in their dorm buildings since the learning is less structured for them. 

This is a view from the 10th grade classroom, overlooking the Physical Training field. Villagers often walk through the campus.

There is also a prayer hall that provides a space for anyone to pray. Shanti Bhavan provides an all-inclusive setting and promotes religious tolerance for the variety of beliefs present among the children. 

The dining hall fits all 200+ children and staff for all 3 meals (breakfast, lunch, & dinner) and also provides tea time as well as a afternoon snack. I tried to capture all of the children during a mealtime. 

Visitors come frequently and for the week of October 11th, to celebrate the International Day of the Girl Child, Intel came and provided the older girls an entrepreneurial training class as well as fun activities for everyone else.

During my time at the school, I made friends with many of the staff teachers. I became particularly close with Miss Helen and actually went home with her to the state of Kerala for the teacher's break (will be my next blog post).

On the weekends, many of the other American teachers visited a local town called Hosur.

Here are some random pictures from around the school...