StJoseph’s groupprepare forIndiatrip

A group of Drogheda secondary school students are to embark on a unique humanitarian mission to help the Edmund Rice school called ‘ Providence’ in Shillong, a mountainous area in North East India.

The students, from both Transition Year and 3rd Year at St Joseph’s Secondary School will embrace the feeling of rural India. They set off for this breathtaking journey in October 2018. They will look to teach the students of the school English and various other skills.

Providence School was founded in 1999 to serve the underprivileged children of Shillong. It was started as a project run after normal school times and has transformed into a full time school with over 300 students and full time teachers to its name.

The school provides basic life skills for children who would not normally attend school. The curriculum covers both practical and academic skills – including cooking, plumbing, carpentry, Maths, English and computers - is based solely on the needs of the children. As most children attending suffer from malnutrition, each child receives a cooked mid-day meal with vitamin additives. Teachers from previous trips recall the food as very high quality, which is great because the meals are prepared with the help of the students in the school.

The school is run by donations, which includes the salaries of the teachers are funded by donations and two Irish secondary schools, both St. Joeseph’s of Drogheda and The Abbey CBS in Tipperary. From Donations, Providence were able to build a new extension to cater for the rise in students, as you can see in the picture below, the extension is magnificent.

The Students from St. Joeseph’s will work tirelessly to fund raise for this trip. With all profit from a TY theatre production of ‘Grease’ happening in May going towards this cause.