17th April 2013
Dear Sunday Club,
Thank you so much for sending us all the money you raised during Lent to help build new schools in the Diocese of Vellore in India.
The schools that we are helping are in a very bad state – so bad that the government has said they must be pulled down because they are too dangerous to use. Here is a photograph of one of them and you can see some of the problems – it’s even worse inside! The PARENTS have been told that they need to pay to build the new schools, but they do not have enough money to even feed their families properly or build better homes for themselves, so they can’t stop the government pulling the school down – and then the children will not have a school at all.
It costs about £4,000 to build a new school in India and you can see below how much 
better this one built by the Diocese of Ely looks than the old school, with a good solid wall and roof, and inside it is freshly painted. Schools like this do not have chairs and desks, but the children sit on the floor to work (like they do at home) and so blackboards are painted around the bottom half of the walls inside. You can see that the new school has two doors – this is because two classes will use this building, one sitting at each end of the room – but the classes do not have a wall between them!
The £163 you raised buys a lot of a school building in Vellore – for example it buys most of the materials needed to make the school’s roof – so you can see your money makes a real difference to the children and their families. There is a group of people going to Vellore in August and they will take your money out then to hand to the Bishop of Vellore, so your money will have put a roof on a school building by Christmas!
Thank you again,
Shirley Hall
