Susanna Queiroz

Ms Susanna Queiroz who was the hostess of the TV Globo programme from Brazil was so touched by our work and by the Sarang children that as soon as she reached home she sent us USD 350. Her shining eyes and promise to return soon had already filled our hearts.

How can you contribute?

You can invite the Sarang family to deliver lectures, demonstrations and presentations on issues ranging from alternative education, natural farming, clean energy, conservation, politics & democracy and much more.

The Sarang children perform on request. Their repertoire includes Kalarippayattu, the martial art of Kerala, Parichamuttukali, a folk traditional art form of Kerala, Folk Songs, Classical Music (Vocal & Instrumental) and theatre. All performances will be based on various topics like GM crops, education, women’s issues, environment etc. We also provide basic training in Kalarippayattu for strengthening body and mind. You can contact us for any programme enquiries.

We have created a corpus fund for the activities of Sarang. We hope that this will help us to create an ideal infrastructure at the Sarang campus.

Like to donate?

Some of the recent gift bearers:

Schedule

We learn the basics of democracy in our family. We have a general body meeting in the evening and next day’s schedule is decided there. One team will be in charge of running the show, while the others help them to do it. This team keep on changing week to week. Generally speaking our schedule goes as follows.

We start our day around 5 AM. Breathing exercise will be followed by music practice. Cooking, cleaning the premises, washing, bathing etc will be over by around 9 AM. Classes are arranged from 9.30AM onwards. Whoever doesn’t class will stay home and practice, read, write or get engaged in some activities.

In the evening we keep a lighted lamp outside the house (A tradition) After bathing, cooking and dinner we gather for the general body meeting where we will evaluate the day. We include movies, early morning outings on bicycles, special classes, learning new songs, compositions and other activities in our schedule every now and then. Everyone keeps a journal. In the general body the journal is read. Selected journal entries go to the weekly newsletter.

Young generation

Along with Kannaki and Unniyarcha, the Sarang sisters, there are eight more children at Sarang. Their age group is from 6 to 20. Their parents are farmers, daily wages workers and from villages. Though all of them did not have a holistic vision about their children’s education when they sent their children to Sarang, all had the wish to see their children grow into good citizens in common. Journeying with Sarang has been a learning or rather delearning experience for them and they too are now part of the Sarang team.

Next Generation

Gautham Sarang (28) is the only child who could go through Sarang’s curriculum continuously. He has traveled extensively as part of his studies and handles six languages with ease. He has worked as a contract labourer, photographer, milkman, taxi driver, blacksmith, percussionist, actor, skilled labourer, web designer, and project coordinator, as part of his education and to support the large Sarang family. Anuradha completes him. Their marriage was a simple function. Visit their wedding site at http://we.saranghills.org

Sarang was conceived and developed around Gautham. The Sarang couple learned and unlearned many things observing him growing up. As a young child, Gautham had the opportunity to interact with people from different walks of life. He learnt by observing, imitating and analyzing all that came across his path.

At the age of 7, he surprised his parents by deciding to participate in the 100-day march to “Save Western Ghats”. Along the way, he wrote down his observations on environmental destruction, proving that children are capable of empathizing with their surroundings.
Gautham and Anuradha are working hard to take Sarang to the future under the guidance of Gopalakrishnan and Vijayalekshmi.

Founders

In the year 1979, a young couple, fresh hand teachers just out of teacher training college, were faced with injustice and inaction everywhere they turned. They saw the keepers of justice lax in their duties and teachers who should have been models to their students involved in all sorts of debauchery. There developed in their hearts a deep-seated realization that something was wrong with the society around them.

Sarang was started as a basic school by this teacher couple to provide remedial classes for academically weak children. Eventually, they realized that it is the education system that was weak in content, usefulness and adaptability rather than the children going through it. They found that the flaws of the present education system have a major role in the increasing criminalism in the present society. Ruthless standardization and competition destroys the creativity, individuality and humanity of children.

With the realization that a family remains incomplete without children they conceived their first child, learning about children together, dreaming about the child to come, and nurturing him in their minds. It was then that they realized they did not want their child to go through an education system which created educated criminals.

This young couple was Gopalakrishnan and Vijayalekshmi. Sarang Alternative School evolved as an answer to their quest for an education system that would allow their own child to grow into a good human being, responsible and responsive to the society.

Education

Bishnois consider all lives precious (Photo Courtesy : http://nitawriter.wordpress.com)

Majority of the world population has lived self-reliantly in villages for centuries. Communities like the Native Americans, the Bishnois of India and numerous others were always able to live and let live, balancing production and consumption in a sustainable lifestyle. Rather than taking lessons from them, our modern systems including our education system are designed for an urban environment which is mostly consumerist in nature and hence not sustainable. Hence, arises the need for an alternative education system.

Sarang’s activities can be summed up in one word, education, as the practice of life of a modern species that can live and let live. Education happens everywhere, 24 hours X 365 days. Anything that we hear, see, touch, taste, or smell, making a change within us, is part of our education. Movies, ads, news, speeches, performances, people; all that interacts with us is part of our education. In today’s fast-changing world a static system is not the way to real education.

Currently we have two campuses. While the first generation is training a batch of students at the satellite campus to become teachers , the second generation is trying to prepare the main campus on the hills for their return.

Sarang’s curriculum expands according to each child’s need. The curriculum includes ethics & culture, watershed management, natural farming, forest fire prevention, soil conservation & land development, biodiversity conservation, rural engineering & architecture, technology, art, martial arts, languages & dialects, clean energy, human physiology, sexuality & teenage, primary medicine, cooking & housekeeping, sustainable use of resources, politics, basic economics, & currencies, teaching. Sarang’s campus at Attappady has been developed into a ‘textbook’ keeping this curriculum in mind.

The list is quiet long. But in short, Sarang looks at life as the basis for its curriculum. Kalarippayattu (traditional martial art of Kerala), dance, yoga, and music are essential elements in Sarang’s curriculum for boosting self confidence, creativity and a positive vision. A student at Sarang may learn how to extinguish a forest fire, the dynamics of wind energy, potential of natural farming, development of open source programmes or how to become a leader in a democracy. But great importance is given to ethics, for knowledge without ethics is always dangerous. They may reach out to the ends of the universe, but only with strong roots in the earth of ethics.

Sarang believes that to build a world where truthfulness, humanity beyond all prejudices and optimal use of resources are upheld, these values must be inspired in children at a very early age. Emphasis is given to age since the character of an individual is formed within the age of 7. Any guidance in character formation has to be done at a younger age when the child is not yet biased by various man made differences of race, religion, country, gender, language etc.

This training is possible only at a young age within the family. Ideally, parents are the first teachers. Unfortunately, men and women are not trained, for being good partners or for bringing up children. This is typical in the present education system, where many essential lessons are left out, and many that are included are never used in real life. Sarang is modeled as a democratic family, with the Sarang couple as parents and the students as their children.

Sarang children met Baba Amte, the great humanitarian when they visited Anandwan.

At Sarang, children travel far and wide to explore simple solutions which have been kept alive by good men and women. They live and learn with ‘Sarang’ families wherever they go. Since, Sarang’s curriculum aims at preparing a child for adapting to any kind of environment without loosing his/her individuality, the children absorb the good from all the different ideas they are exposed to.

Sarang is a rural university in its early infancy which dreams of a society of self reliant individuals. Sarang’s goal is to prepare the next generation to live fulfilling lives using minimal resources. We dream of a rural university, proposing no degrees or certificates, but offering a space to learn to cope with life and all its myriad hues and tones.

Our students are free to decide their path in life. As they grow at Sarang they are prepared for self-study. So, they can also choose to acquire academic qualifications and go into any profession. A few of them may also choose to stay back at Sarang to share their experience with younger children or they may journey on to spread the Sarang way elsewhere in world.

Let all of us who feel our children ought to grow up sensitive and empathetic to their surroundings and not lulled into a sense of false security in their childhood leaving them incapable of facing the realities of life join together. Let us work together to provide our children platforms to flourish in their boundless creativity and energy.

“The school’s not a factory
Nor the teacher a labourer!
The student’s not a commodity
Nor the parent a manufacturer!”

We undertake a few, selected web designing projects each year. We have designed web sites for artists, organizations, companies and individuals from different walks of life. Our specialty is in understanding the concept behind the person, organization or company, and creating a site that fits their profile best.

Our web designs are very light since we use only CSS and HTML with a minimum of JavaScript and Flash. Light designs load faster in the browser and the waiting time for the user is very less.

Do you have a site that needs a face-lift? Or do you have a design in mind, but don’t know the complex HTML jargon? We might be able to help you! After playing with CMS like Modx and Joomla we find that WordPress is the best for everyone. If you want a web site that can be updated as easily as a blog we can do that for you with the help of WordPress.

Our web designs are very light since we use only CSS and HTML with a minimum of JavaScript and Flash. Light designs load faster in the browser and the waiting time for the user is very less.

Natural Farming

People had stopped cultivation since there was no top-soil left in this land.

When Gopalakrishnan and Vijayalekshmi started their experiments in natural farming at Sarang, they didn’t have any book knowledge of alternative farming and had no guidance. But their experiences of living and working with their agricultural families were deeply rooted in them. Once they started working on the land all their instincts came alive. They also walked all over Attappady and traveled afar, learning farming practices, suitable for their land, from old farmers. Slowly their experiences metamorphised into innovative work on the Sarang land.

In 1983, when the Sarang family bought it, the land was poor due to the ploughed soil being continuously exposed to rain year after year. Through their work in the field Gopalakrishnan and Vijayalekshmi understood that tilling or ploughing, a soil preparation method widely used, was unsuitable for steep sloped areas since it helped soil erosion.

Covering land with bio-mass prevents soil erosion and provides growth of micro-organisms.

By experimentation they found that mulching with biomass had great effect on the soil condition. Mulching helped to retain moisture, controlled soil erosion and facilitated growth of microorganisms. When after mulching the soil with available local material a variety of gram and grain were sowed without ploughing only the gram sprouted but not the grain.

The family used small pit latrines which were covered up with soil after use. This significantly added to the enriching of the soil. Green gram, a legume, was grown to enrich the soil. Percolation pits were dug to retain rain water in the ground. On continuing to mulch along with these activities, in 2-3 years the surface soil became loose and rich. Eventually grains which were sown started emerging.

Sarang Farm : Vegetables, Honey and medicinal fence

The initial 5 years were spent in cultivating soil and nourishing it using these techniques. Eventually, the top soil became black, fertile. From then onwards, pulses and grains needed for the family were produced on the farm itself.

Now the once barren land has rich top soil with the depth of half a foot and is even ready for the rain-fed cultivation of paddy.

According to the rain pattern, crops can be cultivated twice a year (May to September and September to October). A mixture of pulses and grains (black gram, green gram, cow pea etc and maize, millet, sorghum etc) are grown as per the needs of the household. Banana, elephant yam, pumpkin, and other vegetables are grown. Varieties of wild bitter gourd and tomato which were self seeding grow with zero attention.

Elephant foot yam. The average weight is 15Kgs

Now since the family is away studying in different parts of Kerala, only vegetables and drought resistant banana are grown. The two families that look after the campus protect the land, harvest produce like gooseberry and lime, mulch the land and clear the fire boundaries. They are protecting and keeping the land well-tended for the time the whole big Sarang family returns home.

Even on their travels the children are learning the basics of natural farming by cultivating vegetable patches, experimenting with seeds, working on the land whenever possible and keeping their minds as fertile as the land.