Bishopston Funded Balwadi

The children enjoy lunch after a morning of play activities in a Bishopston Link Balwadi.

The Bishopston Kuppam Friendship Link has worked for many years to develop nursery education based on learning through play, in the K. V. Kuppam area. The very first visitors who went from Bishopston in the early eighties noted that though there were some government ‘balwadi’ ( nursery groups), these were predominantly a means of distributing food to small children. It was not usual for any activities to take place which would have stimulated the children and indeed there were very few toys of any kind to be seen in the village.

It was in this context that three women from Bishopston went to K. V. Kuppam in 1991, to set up a small nursery school which was to be run as a place for children to play and to experience lots of different kinds of play materials. With the help of community workers from RUHSA, several young women were recruited to be trained in this way of teaching. Play things were designed and made by local carpenters, metal workers, potters and tailors from the Bishopston Trading Co.

The children practise their exercises with Jayanthi, one of the link trained nursery teachers.

The local carpenters show off the wooden blocks they made for the Link Balwadi.

In subsequent visits the teachers were given further training by the Bishopston visitors and several more small nursery schools were opened in villages around the edge of the Kuppam block. Ongoing support and training was provided over 15 years by the community officers of RUHSA, but in recent years the nurseries have been closed down because the government is now giving more money to villages in Tamil Nadu to set up and run balwadi which provide a play- based curriculum.

Sally runs training days for the Nursery Teachers.

Currently in 2008, friends from Bishopston are working with RUHSA to build a nursery school, which will be run to serve a village in the block but which will also be a model of good nursery practice. It is hoped that this building will be completed this year and that training will then be given to the teachers who will run it and who will provide training to student teachers.