Background
In 1998, Miss Chandra Yonzon, a 16-year-old high school student, felt the need to house and teach the poor children from her region. Beginning in a run-down house in a small mountain village, St. Xavier’s has outgrown several buildings and is now settled on the Tikjuk hillside in West Sikkim. Home to about 50 children from 2 to 18, the school and orphanage has grown in size and reputation. Miss Chandra regularly receives calls from all parts of Sikkim to accept young children orphaned or abandoned in their villages. One three-year-old girl was brought to the school deaf and unable to speak, but has since learned to read, write and dance with her classmates. In a country where it is easy for homeless children to be left to survive on their own, the children at St. Xavier’s are safe, fed and cared for by a dedicated staff of 11 teachers, 2 cooks, a computer teacher and a school mother for the younger children.
In 2000, Dr. Ron Klein, an English teacher in Japan, coming off a hiking trail, met Miss Chandra and began a partnership. His commitment was to raise funds to build a proper school facility, while Miss Chandra concentrated on the daily operations of her school and care for the children. The first building in Tikjuk in 2009, was three toilets and three washrooms. Since then, year by year, the school has added a two-story classroom, dining hall and kitchen, dormitory rooms, office, prayer room, library—and buy the land it is on. A brick wall surrounds the property, which includes a vegetable garden and playground area.
Greetings
Thank you for your kind interest in my school! I have been doing my best to take care of the poor and orphaned children from all over Sikkim State. It has been a long and hard challenge, but we are making progress every day.
St. Xavier’s is an English-medium school, which means that most of the instruction is conducted in English. We teach until the eighth grade; then the older students walk for an hour over the mountain to the state high school. I am happy to report that more than 100 students have graduated from high school and gone on to start their independent lives. They move to the bigger cities like Gangtok or Siliguri, where they find jobs or go to college part-time. They sometimes come back to the school to help.
Our students have clean school uniforms to wear, the boys with ties and jackets, donated by community members who help us as much as they can. Our teachers are working hard for a very pitiful salary. We try to teach our children to take care of each other, the older ones looking after the younger ones. After classes, they love to sing and dance, and coming from the different ethnic groups in Sikkim, are learning about their own cultures. Thanks to the support of people from all over the world, as well as volunteers who come to work with us, we have been able to give our children a good education and quality life they would not have otherwise. Every day we thank the Almighty God for our good health and the success of the school.
Miss Chandra Yonzon
Principal
• Both parents die
• Mothers die; fathers can’t take care of children
• Parents too poor to take care of children
• Floods washed away homes; mothers or both parents died
• Two girls (9-12) sent by father to work in a hotel in Gangtok—
washing floors, working in the kitchen.
They begged Miss Chandra to take them away so they could go to school. Father agreed.
• All students become legal responsibility of the school
Income Sources
Although St. Xavier’s School provides a service to the local region, they do not receive any support from the Central or State government. Operational expenses comes from day students from the local area, who pay what they can for tuition. Local monasteries sometimes make donations to the school. Sometimes, a dairy cow gives excess milk that can be sold, as well as a small poultry farm. Several times, volunteers have started Go-Fund-Me campaigns that raised money for specific purposes.
The Rotary Club of New Orleans has made three trips to the school, donating computers, a printer and projector, and money used for blankets and bed sheets, heaters, solar water heater, winter jackets, carpeting, shoes and socks and a new cell phone for Miss Chandra.