Trust us: It's a good story.

 

The founder

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Narayani Prasad Singh grew up in Ganga Pur, a tiny rural village in India located in a farming area near Varanasi. His mother had only a 5th grade education, while his father was a teacher. Inspired by his father and by the smart kids at his high school, Dr. Singh eventually earned a PhD in nuclear chemistry.

 

He worked as an atomic energy scientist in Bombay and later came to the United States, ending up at the University of Utah School of Medicine as a professor of nuclear chemistry. 

 

The grand persuasion

 

Whenever Dr. Singh returned to his home to visit his parents, he saw that the girls of the village were not going to school. They often married very young. There were no schools beyond eighth grade within 20 miles of the village, so he always felt sorry for these girls.

 

Then one year, he says, “God came into my heart and said, 'Don't feel bad! Do something!'”

 

“I thought, if I could do only one good thing in my life it would be to give these girls a chance—they were starving for opportunities.”  He decided he would build a school for girls in his village.

 

He approached his father and asked if he could build it on the family’s land. His father told him he was crazy. With India’s tangled regulations and a culture of bribes, building a school would be difficult, if not impossible.

 

Father and son talked about it for four hours. At the end of the discussion, the elder Singh agreed to donate the land and run the school as its first principal.

 

First steps

 

In 1989, Dr. Singh used his own funds and donations from friends to build the first building for the school. It is a one-story, airy building with actual benches and desks; in most schools at that time, students sat on the floor.

 

Dr. Singh’s father was very well-liked, and when people gathered in the evenings to talk, he would talk about the new school and why girls should be educated. Many families, hearing him, decided to take a chance on educating their daughters.

 

The school opened in 1990 with 110 students in grades 6, 7, 8, 9, and 11. They were all from poor farming or laborer families whose parents had not had the chance to be educated themselves. Tuition was 10 rupees, or 30 cents, per month. (At present, high school tuition is only $1 per month--far below the actual cost of education of $10 per month.)

 

Getting everybody to school

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When the school opened, seven teachers had been hired, and Dr. Singh bought a jeep to transport them every day to this remote village. Actually, there was no road to the school; the road ended at a railway station almost a mile away. So the teachers would walk from the railway station. During monsoon season, they would sometimes have to slosh barefoot through floodwaters, holding their shoes and the edges of their saris out of the water.

 

After a couple of years, the government continued the dirt road past the school. After several more years, Singh approached government officials and convinced them to pave it.

 

In the beginning, the girls all walked to school. One year, a staff member at the school rode a bike there—and caused quite a stir. Over time, more girls got access to bicycles, and now hundreds of students get to the school by pedaling. After a few years, the school bought its first bus, which was critical to transporting both the growing number of teachers and students who lived far away. The school now has ten buses.  

 

College degrees!

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Slowly, enrollment increased. In 1996, some of the students approached Dr. Singh and asked him to start a college. They asked him, “What kind of a future will I have with only a high school degree?”

 

“That touched my heart,” he says now. “I thought about it very seriously” and decided they were right; he needed to start a Bachelor of Arts program. A few years after that, he added a Bachelor of Science degree to meet the needs of girls who had become interested in science through their high school classes. Then, in 2003, he added a Bachelors of Education program. Master degrees in Arts and Science followed.

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Staffing these programs is an ongoing task. However, the professors are all highly qualified, all Ph.Ds, and mostly women, because female teachers inspire their female students as they plan their future careers. 

 

Buildings and miracles

 

To provide the classrooms for these programs, Dr. Singh built an administration building with classrooms and then began to build a new college building. He could only build as much as he could afford from his own funds and from money donated by friends.

 

Construction on the college building continued over time. It now has three stories, with classrooms, lecture rooms, and labs for chemistry, biology, zoology, and physics.

 

In order to house all of the degree programs as well as the high school, the campus needed yet another building. A piece of land next to the school was owned by several people who had inherited it and who lived in Bombay. They agreed to sell it to the school for 15 lakh per acre (a lakh is 100,000 rupees). But just as they were on the brink of closing the deal, another man offered more for the land. The owners backed out of the agreement and returned to Bombay.

 

Dr. Singh, a Hindu, says, “I was fervently praying to God: ‘What should I do?’” Fifteen days later, the owners changed their minds and sold the land to the school. The piece of land and the building on it now houses the girls’ high school.

 

Singh gives credit to God and says he has seen God’s hand in the school many times. “All I’m trying to do is God’s will. I believe that if you do good things God will help.”

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Birth of the "English School"

 

Some years ago, parents came to him and told him he was doing a great job with the girls. But could he help with their boys? They wanted to send their boys to study in a school where instruction is given in English. But those schools were too expensive for these families. “Can you do something for us?” they asked. Singh decided to start a co-ed English school that would run from kindergarten to eighth grade. This required buying more land and completing yet another building, which was again financed by Dr. Singh and donations from friends.

 

Construction and accreditation are in process to extend this co-educational school to twelfth grade.

 

Today, the entire campus has some 3,000 students. It has 125 staff members--90 teachers/professors and support staff (administration, janitorial, grounds, and drivers).

 

Infrastructure matters

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In many places, girls don't attend school because they have no restroom facilities. Dr. Singh realized the importance of adequate restrooms and included them from the first and has continued to build new restrooms.

 

Water comes from a well, which was pumped by hand until electricity came to the area in the mid-1990s. An electric pump now enables the school to fill a big storage tank to provide enough water for laboratories and the grass. Electricity also enables the classrooms to have fans during the heat of summer.

 

The administrative office received computers in 2005. In 2015, the school set up its first computer lab for students. There are currently twenty computers in the college, and fifteen in the English school.

 

Funding through compassion

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During the first ten years of the school, Dr. Singh donated half of his salary from the University of Utah to the school. This salary, augmented by $20,000-$30,000 in donations he was able to raise from his friends, funded construction and also subsidized the low student fees. Singh also traveled to India for a month or two each year, assisting his father in managing the school.

 

However, in 2000, his father died. Dr. Singh was fifty-five at the time, but he realized that he would have to retire from his job so he could oversee the school. So for the past 17 years, he and his wife have left their comfortable life and children in the United States and moved into his family’s unheated, open-window concrete house in a tiny farming village for half the year. “That changed my life quite a bit,” he laughs. “Sometimes I wonder how I got involved in this!”

 

Retiring early meant he no longer had a regular salary to donate to the school. And over time, donations from his friends trickled away. So the problems and stresses of running the school have affected his health. “I wish I was richer so I could do more,” he says now. “But that’s okay, God has given enough.”

 

Expanding the compassion and the support

 

Several years ago, Dr. Singh’s neighbors Michael and Barbara Fordham decided to spend three months teaching English at the school. They have been back every year since then. Dr. Michael Fordham takes several weeks’ leave from his work as a psychologist, and in the United States he has started a Friends of the School Committee.

 

The Committee is comprised of ordinary people who are passionate about education for these girls.  Other friends of the school have stepped forward to contribute money. Many have contributed scholarship money for the poorest students. A matching grant of $50,000 from the Sorensen Legacy Foundation has helped endow many  scholarships. Sixty-four high school girls received scholarships in the 2016-2017 year. (Would you like to fund a scholarship?)

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Needs and goals

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In recent years, other schools have opened in the area, and they charge higher fees and pay their teachers more. It is becoming more difficult to attract and retain high-quality teachers. Yet high quality teaching is a standard the school insists on, and the hiring process is often lengthy as the management searches for candidates willing to come for the available salary. To help keep these teachers while keeping school fees low, the school needs to raise funds to provide higher salaries.

 

The school also needs more library books, upgrades in laboratory equipment, additional computers, and funds to complete needed construction.

 

The school continues to expand. Since there is great demand for business education, a business degree program will be instituted soon. 

 

Results

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GMV students have much better scores on government exams than do other area schools. 90% or more pass the exams, while the average passing rate in India is around 60%.

 

Seven college students have earned gold medals in their subjects in the government exams, which means they have earned the highest marks in their subjects among hundreds of thousands of students. Fifteen to twenty have earned scores in the top ten.

 

However, to increase the school performance even more, the school has instituted more rigorous student assessment throughout the year and is refining the assessment tools each year.

 

People pop out

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Dr. Singh sums up one of his core beliefs with this story about Gandhi:

 

“While Gandhi was struggling in South Africa [to help create a more just political and social system], one time a white policeman came to his house and said, ‘Gandhi, I’ve come to help you. Are you surprised?’ ‘No.’ ‘Why not? You’re fighting the white government.’’My friend, when you start a good piece of work, people pop out to help you.’

 

“I have found this, that people pop out. And how do they pop out? God sends them to help. I may get depressed and God says to somebody, ‘Okay, Narayani’s in trouble; go help him.’

 

“My belief in God grows deeper and deeper. Why are people helping me? It’s amazing. People over here are caring for people in India.

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"When I see the girls smiling..."

 

“Supporting this school is very difficult, but when I see the girls smiling, all my pain is gone. They are so happy, building their future and learning good things in life.”

 

He learned much of his philosophy from his father, who every day after his shower would say, “God, let me help people today, and stop me whenever I may be hurting anyone.”

 

Dr. Singh says, “My belief is: Help people. That’s what God wants you to do.”