NO CHILD SHOULD BE LEFT BEHIND

*Text also available in Catalan and Spanish

Christmas 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of the Project Laia

It all started in Christmas 2004, when a young Catalan woman named Laia Mendoza was travelling in Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state in India.

She got suddenly involved with the relief work that the local population urgently needed following the devastating tsunami that had just claimed almost 250,000 lives across the Indian Ocean.

This is when she discovered Vedanthangal, a small rural community in the interior located only 80km away from the bustling state capital Chennai, that, though not affected directly by the tsunami, looked in much worse conditions than the devastated coastline itself.

She soon found out that 70% of this community belonged to the outcast and tribal social groups, that is the most discriminated and vulnerable ones based on Indian social hierarchy. And it needed pretty much everything. Infrastructure, good nutrition, health services, jobs, education. But more than anything, it needed hope.

And Laia wanted to understand why. Through exploring Vedanthangal and incessantly talking with as many people as possible, Laia started to grasp how vulnerable and marginalised this community was. Especially women and youth.  

Women were generally excluded from higher education and the workforce because they had to take care of their children, and as a result, many girls were being dropped off school as education was not deemed necessary for them. Also, they were being married off at quite an early age to avoid further economic burden on their families, who had started raising their dowry since the day these girls were born. 

As for the youth, even though there is free access to public schools, they could hardly find any job as hiring requires a good average of literacy, which public education in rural and marginalised areas does not offer. This gap between urban and rural areas was even wider when it came to digital technology – the community did not have access to the internet nor to any quality IT training or equipment.

Informed by all this and the growing need to help this community somehow, Laia decided to act.

She wanted to help Vedanthangal regain hope in its own future, and by focusing on what future is all about: the education of its own children and youth.

But unfortunately, Laia could not see the fruits of her inspiring project.

With their hearts filled with her passion and motivation, her family, her friend Lluís Compte and other Catalan and Indian volunteers decided to make Laia’s dream a reality.

And that is what we have been doing for the past 20 years, facing enormous challenges through persistence, sweat and a lot of joy, thanks to the unconditional commitment from our local volunteers and teaching staff, and from our small but very precious donor base.

Among activities ranging from support to child and reproductive health, micro-credit financing for women empowerment, we focused our efforts in building the foundations for the next generations through quality education to stay true with the spirit of Laia’s dream. 

We set up 3 IT training facilities, whereby several instructors equip children from 6 to 16 years with the necessary IT skills and tools through access to computers, softwares and to the Internet, so that they are not left behind in our digital era.

We are currently working hard to support the much needed renovation and further equipment of these facilities by reaching out to our supporters.

We also take pride in having established a highly reputed nursery and kindergarten available in the area, with 30 children from 2 to 5 years old attending every year. We provide them with uniforms, learning material along with games, dance and singing classes. Pre-school is a crucial stage for every child’s personal and learning development before starting primary school. And it also allows their mothers to undertake other endeavours that can be empowering for themselves and their families. 

And lastly, we are happy to share with you our oldest activity and biggest accomplishment to date, which remains our priority - the 18 after-school centres that we initiated in Vedanthangal and surrounding communities, such as Vandavasi.  

Over 20 years, through these after-school centres, we have reached over 800 kids from 6 to 16 years old, with a focus on girls’ participation, by providing them with high quality education that places the student’s needs and abilities at the core of the learning process along with a strong practical and playful approach, with a focus on core subjects, such as Tamil, English, Mathematics.

We helped train several instructors, all of whom are women, who are now mentoring additional teachers on site, thus ensuring the sustainability of our approach. 

On an ongoing basis, our teachers measure the high quality of education they offer through standardised testing material, which helps us track the progress of these students while making us accountable towards the work we do. 

Based on recent analysis of the testing results, the average score for these students is considerably higher than those of the public schools, which we complement. This means far greater opportunities to both accessing universities and professional schools, and securing jobs.

These positive results tell us that these rural and extremely marginalised communities have embraced the importance and the opportunity to access better education as a catalyst for social change. Most importantly, 48% of the students who have participated in our after-school programs were girls.

However, we still have a long way to go, so that children from neighbouring communities as well, and even in more vulnerable conditions, are not left behind.

In fact, based on pressing and overwhelming demands from more people to have their children benefit from our project, we promised ourselves to set up 5 more new centres for the school year 2024-2025, in addition to the existing 18 ones that we keep supporting. 

These new after-school centres will open their doors in Vandavasi area, where most people belong to tribal castes, hence even more marginalised, by reaching over 180 students.

So far, we managed to launch 1 more centre with 50 students and 2 instructors. But we are hopeful that we will make the other centres become a reality too.

For this reason, we would like to celebrate our 20th anniversary this Christmas by asking you to be part as well of this vital project.

By these festivities, we would like to raise up to EUR 3,750 to be able to cover all the costs to launch and run the 4 new centres for over 130 new students starting next year. It is a realistic goal, and we need your help to make it happen. 

For more clarity, with only EUR 10, you will be helping with the cost for learning material for one child for the whole year. 

On the other hand, with EUR 30 every month for a year, you will be covering the entire cost for the learning material for every student at one centre. 

And with EUR 60 every month for a year, you will be helping us cover the full annual salary of two teachers that will be working at each centre!

In short, your contribution will be vital to bring about real change in the lives of these children, so that they are not left behind.

Let us keep making the hope for a brighter future of this community a reality!

We thank you with all of our hearts and wish you Happy Holidays!

The Laia Project

**If you would like to make a monthly donation, please click here: Donate – Projecte La