Welcome to Jubilee High School, Rayavaram
Jubilee High School is located at Rayavaram, Macherla, Guntur, in Andhra Pradesh, India.
The school campus is the main meeting point for the children in Rayavarum. Here, they can play, meet friends and and have fun. The total strengths of the school is about 600 students. Apart from normal school hours, the children are returning to school from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m, so children spend around 12 hours in the school premises because their parents come home very late in the evening. Most of the children are orphaned or semi orphaned due to the high health risk by pollution from stone quarries and cement factories in Rayavaram and surroundings.
The school is also attached to RCM Elementary school of Athmakur and RCM Elementary School of Polepally. There is a school vehicle to encourage higher education to these under privileged children which is bringing the students every day from the surrounding villages to Jubilee High School. Most of the children are Catholics who are from backward communities. This means that Rayavaram and it surrounding villages are a very backward area. The only warm meal many children receive a day is the one in school. Their parents are to busy with their work on the fields and in the stone quarriers and they don´t have the money.
The children are sitting on the floor to read and to write. Until the toilet construction in 2016 was no sanitation facility available. Children went for open defecation and urination. Due to poor hygiene, children are affected with various reproductive infections. So, there is an increase in school dropouts and resulting in early child marriages. Henceforth poverty is in rise affecting the education of poor children.
Socio Economic Background
Geographically the area is very backward. They do not even meet basic needs. The students are the first generation to the school. Main source of living depends upon cultivation, working in cement factories and stone quarries. The area is a severely drought hit hence with very poor crops. The people´s health is at high risk for TB, pneumonia and congestive pulmonary decease. So, most of the children are orphaned and are forced to enter in to bonded child labour. The parents still need to be motivated and encouraged that their children continue their education in order to make them self reliable in future and to eradicate poverty.
The children are most vulnerable and unhappiest because they have to work from their indebted parents as a pledge by rich people in villages. They hardly have one meal a day. Most of them survive from the mid day meal provided in the school. The parents live with their children for generations to oppression and contempt in Indian society.
Partner School
In 2014 accepted a school in Backnang near Stuttgart, Germany (Max-Born-Gymnasium-Backnang) the Jubilee High School as a partner school. Through money from student projects in Germany, was the hole school renovated in 2014, and furthermore, were 15 toilets built in 2016 which gave many so many children a smile in their faces.
In the streets of Rayavaram...