CUCKOO FOREST SCHOOL

“The Cuckoo Movement for Children” is an informal group of friends and volunteers who have been working with rural children of Tamil Nadu, India since 2004.

For ten remarkable days, we gathered from all over India, and helped to build the Forest School — an alternative schooling for the rural kids, where they would be free to explore, think and create with no rights and wrongs, and nor would there be any grades to defi ne them. - Kaveer Rai. The routine at the construction site needs a mention. We would wake up to the rooster calls of 5:30AM, having slept on rock slabs from an abandoned temple. We would begin work at about 7am to 2 pm. When the sun mellowed down at around 4PM we would hit the building site again, where we were also joined by the village kids and they never failed to shower love on us. We would fi nish work at 7PM, and sometimes even 11PM, depending on the tasks and energy we had.

LOCAL RESIDENTS SHYING AWAY FROM CAMERA ADOBE BRICK MAKING VOLUNTEERS RESTING

The fi rst building for the school was entirely made of earth. The structure mainly refl ected the holistic ideology of the Cuckoo Movement for Children. We learned the skills such as masonry with adobe and mud mortars hands on experience, which made us appreciate the time, energy and material it goes into from brick level to the whole structure.

It was quite interesting to experience how people form diff erent walks of life with no prior knowledge can come together to build a structure in just two weeks. Last but not the least, in future children might proudly say that’s their own school. But for us its an emotion, story, an experience to live by everyday of the life.

Project by: Cuckoo Movement Architects: Varun Thautham, Jeremie Gaudin Team: thirty-four volunteers Year: 2016 Matierlal : Earthen - Mud

HUMAN CHAIN TO TRANSPORT BRICKS MUD-MORTAR MAKING VOLUNTEERS BUILDING SCHOOL

SOURABH MAHESHWARY