CURRENT PROJECT
VIDYA PRASHALA HIGH SCHOOL & JR. COLLEGE
The Vidya Prashala High School and Junior College, Talegaon is just a short drive to the west of Nasik. The school services seven nearby villages with some children coming by bus and other walking up to 7 km each way.
The school toilets were built many years ago and are some 150 meters from the school down a narrow, overgrown path with no security for the children as they make their way back and forth to the facilities.
It seems they were built this far away because at the time nobody thought about cleaning and maintenance. The focus, rather, was on keeping the small as far from the classrooms as possible.
CONTRASTING EXPERIENCES
A visit to the current toilet facilities is a truly horrible experience as you can see from the video if you scroll down half a page. Operation Toilets Project Manager Mark Balla tells us that he spent a couple of minutes walking through the girls' toilet block filming what you see in this video. The stench, as he describes it, stayed in his nose for hours.
At Operation Toilets we find it unacceptable that children should be subjected to this experience. None of us would accept it for our children or grand children and we do not believe that parents in poorer countries should have to accept it either.
Now compare this video with the video to the right showing the hauntingly beautiful daily school assembly. Be sure to turn the volume up for this one. Sorry about the background conversation but you'll get the idea.
