CBB educates more girls in India than in any other country due to its immense population, its extensive poverty, the oppression of its caste system, its pervasive gender discrimination, and the oppression of its indigenous peoples. All of CBB's projects in India are with these disadvantaged girls, who are deeply impoverished. According to the latest government statistics, 40% of the Indian people still live in poverty, a reality that has not changed in spite of India's current economic growth.
Alternative schools
CBB funds alternative schools for girls of the Musahar and other "untouchable" castes who are the absolute lowest of the hundreds of social strata in Bihar, the poorest state in India, making them literally the poorest of the poor. Musahar translates as "rat-eaters" and that is correct--that's how poor these people are.
The alternative schools are administered by the Jesuit Society of India in a region without pubic schools due to civil strife. The girls attend six hours of classes a day, six days a week, and receive two weeks of intensive residential training. They learn Hindi (the local language), English, geography, math, and science, as well as health care and sanitation. The schools also teach human rights and gender equality, emphasizing the key role of girls and women in bringing about change to their communities.
Scholarships in 40 villages
Compassion Beyond Borders partners with Just Organization for Natural Growth in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu to educate tribal and Dalit ("untouchable") girls in villages so remote that CBB's Executive Director was the first foreigner to visit them.
Only 20 years ago female infanticide was common in this area. Some of the girls CBB is educating wouldn't even be alive but for the progress that has already been made. In supporting the schooling of 490 of these girls, CBB is affirming the value of a girl's life and her importance in her community.
JONG has organized 25 education centers in the villages, each led by a local woman who has completed her high school education. These women tutor village children for three hours after school, for which they are being paid for the first time--a monthly salary of $15 from CBB's grant.
Textbooks are free to school children in India, but students must supply their own notebooks that may cost from $2 for the first grade to $30 for the 12th grade. CBB buys these notebooks for the girls and has purchased 50 bicycles for them to travel three to five miles each way to their middle school.
CBB pays the salary of teaching assistants in two local primary schools that have only two teachers for five grades. And it funds a tailoring class for out-of-school girls that gives them a means of earning an income.
After CBB began supporting these girls' education, their school enrollment increased 24% in one year.
Pre-nursing training
Compassion Beyond Borders funds a one-year residential pre-nursing training program for 15 out-of-school tribal girls in the state of Jharkhand. The girls also study English and learn how to use a computer.
When the girls' training is completed, they are given employment in local hospitals, functioning as assistants to university trained nurses. This program is administered by Amar Jyoti, a project of the Missionary Sisters of the Queen of the Apostles.
Refugee schoolgirls
Girls from the Tibetan refugee communities of Bir and Chauntra in northern India receive $150 scholarships from CBB. Some of this funding goes for a girl's school uniform and school supplies, while the remainder pays the fees of the school she is attending.
Refugee children are educated in schools that follow both an Indian and a Tibetan curriculum. They study in the Tibetan language through the fifth grade and afterwards in English. At home, Tibetan remains the spoken language.
Since the Tibetan language is not taught in Tibet under the Chinese administration, the refugee communities and schools have become the sole means for preserving the Tibetan language and the culture that goes with it.
One girl's story: Pema
At the age of ten, Pema walked out of Tibet with her family to a new life in India as a refugee. The family settled in the Bir/Chauntra Tibetan refugee community at the foot of the Himalayas. Pema's father has since passed away, and so her family is now poorer than ever.
After primary school in her village, Pema was placed in a boarding school in Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama in exile, where she has now completed her high school education. Pema is continuing her studies at a university in Bangalore to become a nurse.
