A school that teaches sustainable living

In our childhood, most of us enjoyed an eventful life with nature’s elements like rain, mud, birds, insects, etc. We understood the true taste of life with nature around us. But the current young generation doesn’t have a contact with nature. This thought disturbed a group of agriculturists and environmentalists. They got together and formed an initiative called Cuckoo Movement for Children and set up a school in Puliyanur, Krishnagiri. The team religiously follow Dr Maria Montessori’s, principle: Free the child’s potential, and you will transform him/her for the world. 

“We wanted to give the children a bit of what we enjoyed in our childhood. That was the only goal Siva Raj anna (who initiated this) and his friends had when they conceived the idea. They started off with a small library for children in a village near Dharapuram. Our group is a motley crowd of writers, designers, environmentalists, activists, and organic farmers,” says Ramesh, one of the volunteers.

With contribution from well-wishers, they bought four and a half acres of barren land at Puliyanur and started building a school. “Apart from providing education to underprivileged children, we go beyond the syllabus and introduce them to traditional arts, music, theatre, martial arts, organic farming, environmental awareness, socio-political discussions and so on. As of now, we have built four small huts and one prayer dome (where main events happen). While building the campus, through social media, we had asked people around the world to send a fistful of mud from a place that is special to them. The response was amazing — we received a lot of packages of mud which we used to build the huts. The school has used only materials from the forest for its construction,” he adds.

The prayer dome has a cradle hanging in the middle and the idea was to convey there is no age barrier for those who enters the campus. “Even senior citizens can visit the school and spend time with the children and volunteers sharing their wisdom. Not only an alternate school, but Cuckoo is also a healing centre for people. Recently, we have opened nurseries where children take the saplings and plant them in the nearby forest,” Stalin, another volunteer pitches in.

Muthu teaches paati vaidhyam (ancestral home remedies) to children at the school. A master in foot reflexology and flower therapy, he says, “I teach the children the importance of medicinal flowers that can be used to soothe a person’s state of mind. There are around 38 varieties of flowers that have great medicinal properties. Even people from Tiruvannamalai and Bengaluru come to the school for flower therapy.”