The families of our children all require a thorough and continued guidance and assistance. They are far from notions like regularity, punctuality, reliability and even take surprisingly little responsibility towards their children’s basic needs as food. To supervise the children’s homework is of course out of any consideration, and visits to any relative or friend – especially during marriages or sickness - is of much higher importance than a regular school attendance. For these reasons it is not only necessary to teach the children, but also their parents. The success of our efforts rests on both.

We usually call the parents for 4 to 5 meetings in a year. Though the participation is optional, they have to attest their presence by signature in order to give proper regard to these meetings. Meanwhile we reached a participation of almost 100% and even the children’s fathers are attending the meetings. Often we combine these meetings with the performance of a dance or drama by the children, or we also serve a warm meal.

The main topic of these meetings is to make them realise their part of the responsibility towards their children. This is done in a very humorous and entertaining way. Most of the parents have adopted the attitude “The Shishu Mandir School will manage all problems”, and indeed this is what happens most of the time. But there is no escape from their very own responsibilities, as no school can promote a child who is not attending school regularly. For this reason they are confronted with their responsibilities at each meeting and also with their many deficiencies in fulfilling these, which they accept with a blush and a smile. But even discussions arise, though mainly from the fathers, also critical questions. One father asked why we are sending a child home as a punishment, though we know that during the day both parents are at work and nobody to take care of the child. The argument is undoubtedly logical, but such a rough and startling push is occasionally necessary to awaking the parents from their ever lasting drowsiness.

One of the main burdens of the families are the huge amounts of debts, which accumulate during the years, for one due to the criminally low payment of their work, and for the other due to the indiscriminate spending on alcohol of the fathers, who usually are totally addicted to alcohol. The dependency on alcohol is so strong that they do not only spend their own daily wages, but also part of the wife’s hard earned money. In order to maintain the children to some extent, debts are taken up against enormous rates of interest, which they cannot pay back even in their life time. With this they have entered into a vicious circle, which makes them fully dependent on others.

Our school has started a savings scheme with the parents, who welcomed the scheme with full acclaim. The amounts which are to be paid every month in the name of their children, are fixed in the bank for a minimum of 5 years, but hopefully up to the end of the child’s education at our school. So at the end of the school career a sizeable amount will have accumulated which can be used for the child’s further education, marriage or setting up of an own shop.

Other themes like hygiene, AIDS, healthy nourishment etc. are also discussed with the parents by our social workers.

We remain optimistic, although a thorough re-orientation certainly can be expected only in the generation of the children. But still – even some parents are educatable …..