Ku Shivangi N Jhala Kanya Vidyalaya

Our school, Ku Shivangi N Jhala Kanya Vidyalaya, sits in Limbdi, Surendranagar. It’s specifically for the girls around here. The building has been standing for a long time, and the paint is peeling a little in some corners, but we keep the inside tidy. Most of the girls walk here from the nearby houses or come in from the smaller villages nearby. You can see them in their uniforms every morning walking down the dusty roads. We have a few big trees in the courtyard that give some good shade during the lunch break. Sometimes the goats from the neighborhood wander near the gate, and the watchman has to shoo them away. We don’t have a big hall, so we usually gather in the open space for the morning prayers. The teachers are mostly local women who have been working here for years. They know most of the families by name. We have some blackboards that need a fresh coat of paint, but they work fine for writing out the day’s lessons. It gets very quiet during class time, except for the sound of a teacher’s voice or the wind blowing through the open windows. It’s a simple setup we have here in Surendra Nagar. We just focus on making sure the girls get through their books and pass their tests so they can move on to whatever is next for them.