ATLANTA: Preschoolers’ change will help light school in India

Few people use stepping stools to reach their piggy banks, but the donors clutching change at Druid Hills United Methodist Preschool one recent morning needed a boost.

Swarming the big blue cooler-turned-bank in the school hallway, they stepped up and stretched toward the slot in the middle. Their coins dropped in with a satisfying “plunk.”

The collection isn’t just any school benefit. These kids have been scooping up spare change to buy electricity for peers thousands of miles away.

Parent Mary Helen Ramming organized the drive to aid Rainbow Primary School in Hyderabad, India, a school founded by a longtime friend in late 2005. The partly open-air school, which volunteers helped build brick by brick, serves more than 300 children in a desperately poor neighborhood where many start work so young they don’t get a chance to be students.

Rainbow’s preschool building still has no electrical wiring. By spring, Ramming hopes to collect $800 in small change —- which buys much more in Hyderabad than Atlanta.

She wants the effort to convey a concrete lesson in charity.

“These days in philanthropy, it all disappears into a pie chart somewhere,” said Ramming, who has two sons at the Druid Hills school.

Supporters will videotape the principal in India receiving the donation so the Druid Hills students can see where their savings went. Rainbow students will send their artwork to Druid Hills as a thank you.

The Atlanta students have also been learning about India and its traditions to help them connect to the students at Rainbow Primary.

Teacher Archana “Archie” Bhusari’s class of kindergartners can easily count to four in Hindi. Students also recently made lamps in celebration of Diwali, the festival of lights.

Leigh Ann Gilbert, Rainbow’s founder, said the money collected will help outfit the preschool, housed in “a small sliver of a building,” with an electrical connection, wiring, light bulbs and some service.

Now, the building’s two windows don’t bring in enough natural light, she said.

Ramming took up a more traditional collection at the preschool last school year, too, using envelopes, which netted nearly $400 to pay the salary of a teacher at Rainbow Primary.

“Everyone really responded,” Gilbert said. “It was this little kid, little kid giving.”

> ON THE WEB: For more information about this topic: www.rainbowprimaryschool.com