Our journey began in March 2018 when Colegio Base Foundation and Vicente Ferrer Foundation signed an agreement to build a school in India, which would bear the name “Colegio Base Foundation School.”
We sought to collaborate with a transparent foundation that ensured the money raised by families and the efforts of students reached our goal. That’s when we reached out to the Vicente Ferrer Foundation after contacting many other entities that did not provide what we were looking for, let alone transparency. This marked the beginning of construction, which concluded a year later in 2019. Unfortunately, the pandemic prevented us from attending the inauguration.
The school is located in the state of Andhra Pradesh in southeastern India, consisting of an open-plan building with a porch. It serves as a school for children and a workshop space for their mothers, referred to as the “School-Community Center.”
The new facility benefits the children of the village, where reinforcement classes are conducted, and meetings of local organizations (sanghams) take place, along with the distribution of nutritional packages. In these schools, the government school program is taught as reinforcement and necessary support, enabling children from disadvantaged communities to continue their studies in government primary schools.
One of the activities we aimed to establish was communication between our students and those in India. We began creating origami crane garlands to send as gifts, as they had sent us a necklace and shawl for the inauguration.
Inter-school activities must be carried out with great sensitivity, considering the differences between the two schools. To date, we have rejected some proposed activities, such as videos showcasing the facilities or different resources in our school.
Projects like these make access to education possible, seen as a fundamental basis for community development. The Vicente Ferrer Foundation welcomes the educational and parental community of our school to their facilities for three nights, accompanied by a Spanish-speaking guide.
Thank you for continuing to collaborate with us in our school.
Paz López
Director of Colegio Base Foundation
