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« Schools of the World » is a humanitarian organisation, founded at the end of 1997, whose aim is to support small schools in the shanty-towns of Calcutta and in the Sunderbans Islands of Bengal. As a volunteer worker in the Mother Teresa orphanage, close to the Howrah station, in Calcutta, Martial Salamolard, the founder, discovered the reality of life in the shanty-towns and remote areas of this region of the world. For almost six months he lived with children from this destitute area. His observation was as follows: With utmost urgency we must find new ways to develop real action and support and to ensure regular and sufficient financial, technical and pedagogic resources in order to undertake a realistic humanitarian effort.
The first fund-raising campaigns were organised in Geneva and in French-speaking Switzerland from spring 1998 in order to undertake our first actions in Calcutta and the Sunderbans Islands. From then on our activities have not stopped developing and the number of children helped has increased regularly.
While maintaining our current educational programme, we are also striving to increase our capacity to welcome more children into our schools. We support destitute children in the shanty-towns of Calcutta and the countryside of Bengal, Bihar and Rajasthan. We were taking care of around 300 children in the spring of 1998. Today, in 2008, we are helping educate almost 6000 children in some 20 schools.
After ten years of work focused on schooling, apprenticeships and healthcare, we plan on continuing this work as a priority while taking account of new needs as they arise. Besides our indispensable educational work, we would also like to favour the best possible conditions for the development of more balanced family-planning in the shanty-towns and the countryside; on another front, we would also like to develop in the country a better-performing social service system and participate in the construction of a social service infrastructure in the villages.
All our forthcoming actions must take account of these new priorities to ensure that the newly acquired wealth is not offset by an inconsiderate growth in the number of children to feed, educate and take care of.
Right from the start-up of our operations in the autumn of 1997, our wish was to become and remain a volunteer organisation which does not charge for its expenses against the income received from gifts or fostering a child. This wish continues to be respected for every gift and sponsorship we receive.
This means that all the income we receive goes 100% into the projects we undertake for the benefit of disadvantaged children. We do not deduct expenses for the management of projects, for fund-raising, for administration and general management. Our statutes stipulate that “the guiding principle of the association is voluntary work and the absence of administrative expenses”.
The organization of events, project management, fund-raising, administrative expenses and office costs are all offset by our income from advertising and related events as well as our individual contributions.