School Visit: Maivaya School

Summary: DSH runs and operates is latest addition, Mavaiya. While benefits of running and operating a school can be numerous (e.g., increased usage and effectiveness of DSH at the school), I currently believe that the costs are far higher and do not think that this is the appropriate long-term direction for DSH.

Maivaya, the newest addition to DSH, is the in-house name for a school founded for slum children in the Mavaiya neighborhood in Lucknow. SEWA had shut down its operations in the area, and DSH decided to rent a few rooms to start and operate our own school.

There were approximately 20 students of varying ages in second grade, learning the Hindi alphabet and the multiplication table. These kids attend school from 10-1 pm, after which they help their families as much as possible. Some of these children were mature beyond their years (e.g., a 6 year old taking care of younger siblings as a mother would). When we left the school, I saw one older but very bright girl, Sangita, on the street helping her mother do laundry. It was good to see, however, that the conditions these kids were in didn’t crush their spirits, as they were as fun as any I’ve interacted with.

Maivaya is a way for DSH to test its ability to grow through establishing brick-and-mortar schools. An additional benefit of DSH starting brick-and-mortar schools is that DSH is likely more readily adopted and incorporated into the school’s functioning if it’s there from the beginning. Also, because DSH has full control over Maivaiya, the school will be an important testing ground for programs or features we may want to launch in the future.

At the moment, I’m far from being convinced that DSH should grow through establishing schools, as that would pull us away from our core competence of content development and exponentially increase our operational costs.