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Gwen Cook
Academy Students are heading to India to build a health center
Twelve St. Johnsbury students are in the village of Poriyar, India helping to improve the lives of some of their most impoverished people.
The project was coordinated by the Academy’s Colwell Center for Global Understanding. While there, the group will build a small health center in the village, which is located in the coastal region. The area was struck by the catastrophic Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. Other projects they hope to accomplish are to install smokeless stoves in homes, to create and educate about malaria and pre-natal care, and to begin the process, which would start health files for the area.
The people living in the village, which has a population of around 7000, are all members of India’s Dalit caste and are known as “untouchables.” They all suffer from severe poverty as well as high illiteracy. The unemployment rates are very high in the area.
They left for India on February 12th and they will return on March 3rd. The students have been meeting every other week since the start of the school year to prepare and plan for the trip. They were in charge of researching cultural and health issues that the area faces as well as fundraising the $5000 to build the health center and to help pay for the group’s other projects for Poriyar.
The chaperones for the trip will be Colwell Center director Glenn Ehrean and the Academy’s Director of Health and Wellness, Sarah Garey.
The idea for this service trip began two years ago as a senior Capstone research project. Ehrean refined the proposal and then got the proposal approved by the Academy Headmaster, Tom Lovett.
The project got a lot of help and support from Ann Peck, who is the director of the Help-Kids-India, Inc. Help-Kids-India, Inc is a non-profit organization based in Topsham, Vermont that helps to provide education to underprivileged children in rural Indian villages by starting small schools. These schools are called chreches. Peck helped to identify the Poriyar region’s needs and potential solutions to the problem. She will also accompany the students while they are in India.
Ehrean wanted to stress that the trip is not a travel tour. They wont be traveling at all actually. Instead, they will be doing hard labor and hopefully improving the access to community health for the entire village.