Palayanur

Demographics

School name

Venu Udayar Middle School

Location

Palayanur village
Tiruvarur district
Tamil Nadu.

Nearest railway stations

Tiruvarur junction
Kumbakonam junction
Tip: While Tiruvarur is much closer than Kumbakonam, there are far less trains to Tiruvarur.

Nearest bus stops

Major bus stations: Tiruvarur, Mannargudi
Local bus stop: Palayanur (on Vadapathimangalam to Mannargudi route, and closer to Vadapathimangalam)
Tip: Though Tiruvarur is closer than Mannargudi, the difference is small.

Description

Background

Started in 1932 by an Indian independence activist Venugopalasamy Udayar as a not-for-profit center of learning. Originally started as a thinnai pallikoodam (verandah school) for lower classes, it has now developed into a middle school offering classes up to 8th level. Its day-to-day working is currently being managed by his son, Nandagopal. While the school is not a government school, its expenses are covered by a combination of outside donations, managing family's own properties and partial government aids. The village is primarily (>90%) dependent on agriculture. Owing to recent changes in rainfall patterns, the economic conditions of the village families have suffered a lot - so much so that the free daily mid-day meals provided at the school is one of the biggest incentives for attendance.

Infrastructure

The school recently moved into a newly constructed building. The place has electricity for most parts of the day and has access to telephone lines. It does not have an internet yet, but can be obtained with relative ease once the computers are ready.

Looking for

Mainly looking for sponsors to support the cost of OLPC laptops.

Why this school?

Apart from being the kind of school that OLPC aims to target, it also has a long track record of a motivated and sincere management. The managing family is very interested in bringing this project to the school and to give students the access to the web of knowledge. I know this for a fact because I am closely related to them (with founder, Venugopalasamy Udayar, being my maternal grandfather). The family had recently organized for donations to fix the decades-old building and is not able to gather any more donations to fund OLPC laptop units, except for one or two.

Contact

Guhan Sukumaran
PhD student (Theoretical Physics)
University of Bonn at Germany
Visiting Card: click here
Also: guhan.web {at gmail dot com}