My visit to Tonea School in India
Chelsea Mitchell
Bachelor of Arts student
Avondale College of Higher Education
No roads lead to Tonea. The boarding school in the state of Jharkhand has 357 students and although well-established by Indian standards, there are still cracks. One of the cracks: lack of child sponsorship. Sponsorship funds the child’s education—not just the cost of tuition but of board, bedding, food, books and uniform, too. Credit: Chelsea Mitchell.
What you see first are children. To your left and to your right. Children in matching clothes, with matching hair styles, yet with very different stories. The second thing you see is their modest bows and pressed palms. One after another, in a 200-metre domino effect, they greet you in this way. The third thing you see is a banner. It reads, “We love you!” You can’t help but adore them, too. Welcome to Tonea School.
We’re in the state of Jharkhand in eastern India. We’ve driven five hours from the capital, Ranchi, and we’ve reached the end of the road. We’re lost, again—there are no roads into Tonea. The boarding school has 357 students and although well-established by Indian standards, there are still cracks.
The first: staffing. The school employs 11 teachers, only four of who are qualified to teach. Funding for the school is at a low level, so the school struggles to attract qualified teachers. One of the few ways to increase funding is through sponsorship. Not-for-profit Christian organisation Asian Aid, which partners with Tonea, is working to improve the quality of education.
The second: infrastructure. Asian Aid has installed two pumps to ensure the students have access to clean water. It has also built a girls’ dormitory and furnished it 40 bunk beds. But there were more boarding students than beds. Students had been sleeping four to a bed or on a blanket on the concrete outside until November 2011, when Avondale College of Higher Education’s student mission club COSMOS raised enough money to fund the building of a boys’ dormitory.
The third: sponsorship. Only 83 students at Tonea are sponsored.
You, too, can be an agent for change at Tonea.
The school needs more bunk beds. It needs a new dormitory to accommodate all the girls, rather than half of them. And it needs a new shower block for the girls, who currently wash under disjointed tarpaulins.
Asian Aid also needs more sponsors. Sponsoring a child through Asian Aid funds the child’s education—not just the cost of tuition but of board, bedding, food, books and uniform, too. And education is one of the most powerful tools of change in the world.
The students at Tonea are desperate for you to respond.
Chelsea travelled with four of her International Development and Poverty Studies classmates and lecturer Brad Watson to India and Nepal at the end of 2011.