$5 Feeds a Child in Rural India for 1 Month. Please Help!

Survivor couple Lee Carseldine & Elena Rowland are volunteering in a rural school in Bodhgaya, India and need your help to feed & educate children living in severe poverty in one of the poorest regions of India.

About the Campaign

Every $5 donation feeds 1 child a nourishing lunch for an entire month.

It takes only $5 to feed a child a nutritious school lunch for an entire month. Sadly, some children living in severe poverty, rely solely on this as their main meal for the day. This incredible rural Indian school providing free education is struggling and needs our help.

At a cost of AUD $0.25 p/child p/meal, our goal is to raise AUD $5,000 to feed the entire school of 500 students for 2 whole months and help see them through financial difficulties.

Every single donation, goes directly to the cause.

About The School Lunch Project

The project is centered around a rural school which caters to the most vulnerable communities living in severe poverty in Eastern India. The students come from the surrounding villages which lack basic infrastructure and without this school, would have virtually no access to education. The reality of unjust social hierarchy simply does not allow children of poor families to receive an education.

The school is the first of it’s kind in this area as such it has faced incredible resistance from the village elites with a lack of understanding of the community benefits associated with ‘new’ knowledge systems and formal education opportunities, particularly for girls and children with special needs.

Slowly but surely, the pupil base has grown incredibly over the years and now has a waiting list of over 300 students who simply cannot obtain an education due to a lack of resources.

Through this project, we'll provide lunch to the existing student base for 2 months enabling the school sufficient time to fund raise for the remainder of the school year.

About El & Lee

LEE CARSELDINE

Lee is a retired professional cricketer who played 132 matches for Queensland and franchises all around the world. Lee was forced to retire after back problems and he underwent a spinal fusion and suffered from a life threatening Staph infection. He went on to make a remarkable cricket comeback by learning to walk again. Lee has completed a double Masters degree in MBA and Finance and is founder of ‘Droneit’ which uses drone technology to capture stunning aerial content. Lee maintains a strong focus on fitness, using his past experience as a driving force to have completed a number of personal achievements including marathons, triathlons,the Kokoda track and Australian Survivor in which he finished runner up.

ELENA “EL” ROWLAND

El has served with the Australian Army for 13 years on numerous deployments. In 2014 she was awarded a scholarship to France in recognition for her outstanding and inspirational work as an Australian Soldier. El has founded her own charity Exercise Stone Pillow, was a nominee for Australian of the Year and in 2016 she got 2nd runner up in Australian Survivor. Using her life experiences of hardship and perspective, she founded Belle of the Ashes to lead & transform women from her own experiences. As a passionate humanitarian volunteer, El has completed several overseas volunteer placements including this project in a woman and children's commune in Fiji.

About Bodhgaya, India

Bodhgaya is a sacred Buddhist pilgrimage site where Gautama attained supreme knowledge to become Buddha, the Enlightened One in approx 525 BC. Sadly, this is a very poor region with significant needs in all areas of social, civil infrastructure, education, healthcare and employment. The state of Bihar is considered one of the poorest and most impoverished areas in India. The villages around Bodhgaya in particular, have been living in poverty for multiple generations.

The team need volunteers for English teaching, Healthcare, Construction, Woman's Empowerment, Special Needs assistance and so much more. Click here to see how you can help by volunteering in india.

Charity Organization

We’re volunteering through Involvement Volunteers International (IVI), an Australian Charity with over 30 years supporting volunteer missions & fundraising campaigns for developing communities. Go here to see more information about the project.

https://www.volunteering.org.au/projects/volunteer...