Buddha's Smile School

Education systems in many of the world’s poorest countries are now experiencing the aftershock of the global economic downturn. The 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, released on 19 January, argues that the crisis could create a lost generation of children whose life chances will have been irreparably damaged by a failure to protect [...]

The Hindu: India still has the largest number of illiterate adults in the world, but has made “rapid advances” in cutting down the numbers of school drop outs, a new UN report on education has said. The Education For All-Global Monitoring Report, released here on Wednesday finds that out of the total 759 million illiterate [...]

When Chandra Bhan Prasad visits his ancestral village in these feudal badlands of northern India, he dispenses the following advice to his fellow untouchables: Get rid of your cattle, because the care of animals demands children’s labor. Invest in your children’s education instead of in jewelry or land. Cities are good for Dalit outcastes like us, and so is India’s new capitalism.

States such as Maharshtra, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi and Bihar spend less than two per cent of their Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP), he said.

Various studies have revealed that poverty can be reduced by sending children from India’s disadvantaged groups to schools instead of sending them to work. If a child is in school, adults of his/her family will get work from where the child used to work. When the child of family goes for work then, adults of that family generally sit idle and the wages earned by the children are ill spent by their family. The employers prefer to engage children on work rather than adults so that they have to pay less wages to children. In this way children are exploited.

Fifty years into Independence, India’s children have little to celebrate: 6.3 crore (63 million) of them are still out of school. This despite the constitutional directive urging all states to provide “free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of 14 years”. The Constitution envisaged fulfilling this promise by 1960. Yet, if present trends continue, India is still 50 years away from reaching the goal.

On June 7 and 13, Amistad International will be staging a special Concert and Art Auction in New York City for Buddha’s Smile School. Performers include a mix of world, jazz, rock, and contemporary classical musicians combines with an extensive group of well know artists.

It’s very difficult to find someone like Rajan, my aunt. It’s like opening a 1,000 shells under the sea to find one pearl. Anybody can love a rosebud it takes a great deal to love a leaf! It’s very easy to love someone who is beautiful, but love the one who can make your life beautiful…

In February 2005 Vanessa Turner wrote an article about Buddha’s Smile School for Yoga & Health — Europe’s best selling Yoga magazine. Jane Sill, the Editor of Yoga & Health kindly agreed to send us the article so we could make it available for download here. Here is a excerpt: Dream in Sarnath: Buddha’s Smile [...]

Rajan, 35, originally came from Calcutta. As a young child, she had always been very sensitive to the suffering around her, so much so that she used to wake up before her mother did and prepare food and clothes to give to the beggars in her area. Rajan’s gentleness and love is what won the [...]