Jeevan School in Samneghat - An Introduction

The grass roots NGO "Jeevan Shiksha Samaj Seva Samiti Varanasi" (Basic Human Needs) offers primary education, health care, daily nutritious meals, and boarding options to well over 100 marginalised children.

The Children

Our children are vulnerable in many ways: They are prone to sexual abuse, physical and psychological violence and exploitation. Most of their time they spend as slum dwellers in the outskirts of Varanasi, where their fathers work as rickshaw pullers or sweepers and their mothers are professional beggars or scavengers.

Children's Home Environment

The biggest threat to the childrens´ health is polluted water and poor nutrition. During their stay in Varanasi, they depend to a great extent on the Ganges river (Ganga) for water supply. They not only wash their dishes, their clothes and themselves in the Ganga, but especially children also drink the highly polluted water. The riverbank serves as the only available sanitary system they have access to and it is their garbage dump as well. The children regularly suffer from diseases related to polluted water (amoebia, worms, diarrhea, skin rushes) - and diarrhea and resulting dehydration in combination with malnourishment is the most common reason for child mortality in their community. A majority of the slum dwellers are regular drug users or alcoholics. There is also a fair amount of violence which regularly occurs in the area - because they have no proper homes, the children are fully exposed to this violence and many of them start smoking, drinking and taking drugs from a very young age, often becoming addicted even before they reach adulthood. By providing a home away from all that, the BHN hostel has given some of these kids the chance to grow free from the cycle of violence and addiction.

The Hostel

In our boarding school ("hostel") 30 kids in extreme need live, learn, play, and work together. We want to offer them more than just a place to stay; instead we strive to give them the possibility to blossom in a safe and peaceful home. All of our children came to us with various traumatic experiences - sexual abuse, malnourishment, physical violence, etc. In the hostel the children for the first time in their lives experience a place where they are enabled to learn peaceful ways of communication and start to become children again.