Kanagamma Chattram, India, was determined to help children in the remote village get to school
By Robin Williams
A FLEDGLING centre for early childhood education in an impoverished village in India will receive a life-changing gift this week thanks to a young Brisbane woman.
Sarah Millar has spent the past year juggling the usual work and study commitments of most typical 18-year-olds but has also added a determination to raise $18,000 for a bus for Nano Nagle Playschool.
The school was established in 2011 in one room of the home in which Presentation Sisters live in Kanagamma Chattram, an impoverished village 100km from Chennai, India.
They are the first children in a culture that is 5000 years old to be offered a formal education.
Sarah, along with nine fellow students from St Rita’s College, Clayfield, visited the school in September last year and she has been determined ever since to provide them with a bus to transport 70 children from the district to the school each day.
“When we were there, that is what they said they wanted (and) I just knew it had to be done and if I didn’t do it no one would,” she said.
Over the past year Sarah has shared the Kanagamma Chattram School’s story and her own drive to provide the bus.
She set up a partnership with and secured a $20,000 donation from the Australian Medical Association Queensland and organised and held a Bollywood-themed evening at St Rita’s supported by the school community and the Presentation Sisters.
This week Sarah returned to India to present the $18,000 bus to Nano Nagle Playschool and hand over a further $16,000 to cover fuel and maintenance.
While there she will meet up with a group of St Rita’s College students who are on a similar immersion to the one she took last year.
Her message to those students and other youth who want to make a difference in the world is to “just do it”.
“You can’t expect to make a difference if you’re not prepared to act on it,” she said.
“It’s a small thing for me, just raising some money, but I’ve changed the lives of 70 children dramatically and that is a whole community.”
