Sustainable Change Begins When Communities Come Together, Participate, and Create Solutions
Lakshmi, 16
With the right support and collective effort, communities can create sustainable solutions that protect the environment, improve livelihoods, and build a brighter future for everyone.
- 11
- students on the shared route
- 94%
- attendance, up from 61%
- 2
- years of support committed
Placeholder story. Replace with a real account recorded with the participant's consent before launch.
Lakshmi's fees were covered. Her books were covered. The thing that stopped her attending was eleven kilometres of road that becomes impassable for three months of the year.
What the records showed
Her attendance did not fall gradually. It fell off a cliff in the second week of the monsoon and stayed down. That pattern turned out to be shared by ten other students from the same two villages.
What we changed
Fixing the road was beyond us. Sharing the cost of a route that already existed was not. Eleven students now travel together on a service that runs whatever the weather.
Where she is now
She is in her final year and intends to sit the entrance examination for a nursing course. The scholarship that was already hers is finally doing what it was meant to.
What we took from it
We now look at attendance by week rather than by term. A termly average would have hidden this completely.
“Nobody asked me why I stopped coming. They assumed I had lost interest.”
