The Story of DRAG and Goat

Education NGOs (non-government organisations)

Over the years I have worked with many education NGOs, some of them inspiring, others depressingly badly run. Those that stand out are:

The Central Asia Institute (www.ikat.org) set up by former mountaineer Greg Mortenson to build girl’ schools in some of the most isolated areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Greg’s book Three Cups of Tea has been read by millions now, and though he is now known to so many his grassroots work continues, battling to keep the schools open as the Taliban try and shut them down. Greg learnt fast that for a man to join jihad he had to get the blessing of his mother and his mullah. A woman who has been given a basic education will be able to reason with her son about going to fight.

Going to School was started by Lisa Heydlauff, a gutsy young woman who came to India and took on the bureaucracy in order to try and inspire children to think beyond the standardised rote-learning methods practiced in almost all Indian schools, and certainly in all the government schools. Lisa and Going to School have now moved into young entrepreneur programmes that take micro-financing into a new era (www.goingtoschool.com)

The Barefoot College was started by a powerhouse of a man, Bunker Roy, in Rajasthan in 1972. Roy’s founding principal was that the solutions to the rural problems of India lie within the communities themselves. There are now centres all over India providing education, income generation, water, sanitation and solar power projects, and more. (www.barefootcollege.org)

Bal Basera, The Children’s Refuge, started out as a shelter at Jaipur Railway Station in Rajasthan. It provided food, care, and then education for runaways and orphans, protecting them from the racketeers who prowl the station looking for vulnerable children coming off the trains, in order to use them for cheap labour and prostitution. Now the refuge has expanded to other projects around the station, and in the city of Jaipur, protecting and nurture these homeless children. (http://taabar.org/bal_basera.htm)