The kids of the month for August were Shilpa and Surya. Both are excelling in school, yet come from difficult backgrounds.
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| Shilpa, age 8, came to Karunya Mane a year ago (April 2011), along with her little brother Jeevan. She lived with her mom and dad in a slum area of Mysore in a one-room grass shack that they built, with a door that barely closed. Shilpa never attended school because she stayed home to watch little Jeevan when mom went to work. Mom gathered discarded paper and cardboard and sold it by weight. When Shilpa came to KM, she could not read or write. One of our tutors helped her for a month with the basics and we then enrolled her in school, 1st grade, in May 2011. Since then, she's only gotten A+s in all of her classes and her teachers say that her behavior is impeccable. |
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| Surya, age 9, has been with us at KM for a few years, and is our star in school. We met him in 2005 on the streets of Mysore, where he played while mom sat and begged on the sidewalk. Surya has always been a very well behaved boy, and this most recent quarterly test, he was ranked #1 in his 3rd grade class. Surya's English is now so good (!) that he sometimes translates between English and Kannada for some of our non-Kannada speaking friends who come to visit the kids. |
