Nallasopara - The Journey to get there.

The real leader has no need to lead-he is content to point the way. Henry Miller

Nallasopara is a community on the northern boundary of the city of Mumbai. Many families moving to Mumbai from the rural areas can not afford to live in Mumbai, and thus settle in Nallasopara.

There are few services in the area. There are no government schools, and only a few inadequate private schools. It is estimated that in the immediate area of Nallasopara where One! operates a school with the current registration of 246 students (over 200 attend regularly), there are well over 100 school aged children who are still not attending any school and closer to a thousand children who are receiving an inadequate education.

The Nallasopara school "Ek Asha" - meaning 'one hope' - is a joint project by One! International and Children's Hope India (www.childrenshopeindia.org)
One! International began teaching in the area in 2007. Expansion of services has been made possible with the partnership of Children's Hope India in June of 2009.

Progress and work at the school will be a subject of a future blog and information will also be posted on the One! web page.( www.one-international.com)

I want to share with you the journey that must be taken to get to the school in Nallasopara - written by Tania.

The journey to Nallasopara from the volunteer apartment in Bandra is an arduous one. They leave their house by 6:30am and take a rikshaw to Bandra Station hoping to get there in time to catch the 7:11 fast train. The train ride is a beautiful one at that time without much rush but it is 55 minutes long. From the Nallasopara train station it is a short 5 minute walk to the shared rikshaw stand where five people are crammed into a 3 man vehicle. The rikshaw ride to Santosh Bhavan (our locality) is 15-20 minutes. From the main road, they then walk 20 minutes in to the school. All in all it is a complicated and arduous 2 hours from door to door.

Many Indian job seekers have come to Nallasopara for a job interview and immediately turned around never to be seen again because of the difficulty of travel and the underdeveloped state of the suburb itself. Our volunteers never complain and just take it as part of the experience. They are very committed and courageous! Some of our staff travel even longer: Vijay and Bhavesh 2 1/2 hours and Vinita 2 hours 45 minutes.