Farm Hill Learning – Requesting Support
Dear All,
Some of you are aware of the work that we (My wife Chithra and I) have been doing in education and autism (Details in the end).
I am writing this to announce our next project – Farm Hill Learning, and seek your support for the same. Farm Hill is an inclusive, neurodiverse a community of teachers, parents and students learning together in a close to nature setting – a 4.5-acre piece of land about 65 km from Bangalore, on the Chennai highway near Shoolagiri, acquired with generous support from many friends.
[](https://venugvgk.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/farm-hill-learning-requesting-support/img_20181024_094555681/) [](https://venugvgk.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/farm-hill-learning-requesting-support/img_20181024_095318023/) [](https://venugvgk.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/farm-hill-learning-requesting-support/img_20190101_075604716/) Why Farm Hill?Many of us would agree that the way we educate our children needs a serious overhaul. There needs to be many alternatives to the monocultural way we are currently educating them. There are a few alternative schools that have been running successfully but we need many more. Farm Hill intends to provide one such alternative.
The other thread running through Farm Hill is the need for us to work with people who are different from the most of us. When we say ‘every child is different’, many of us do not seem to be extending the definition of ‘different’ to include children whose neurologies are different. Farm Hill intends to address this by including children on the autism spectrum in our student population.
Over a period of time, we have found that the way one educates an autistic child is no different from the way one educates a neurotypical child; it is just that the current school system is suitable for neither. We intend to work with both neurotypical and autistic children in a setting that takes care of the unique needs of each child.
We need support.
Like we mentioned, we have already acquired the land. We intend to start by the mid-2019. We need support for the first set of buildings – one living space for about 20 people, one kitchen and a multi-purpose hall. We also need a 20- seater bus.
Total funding requirement would be around 60 lakhs – approximately, 45 for buildings and 15 for the bus.
We are setup as a trust. Donations would be tax-exempt.
We hope this is informative enough. Please get in touch if you are interested in being a part of our journey or to just say Hi. You can write to me on venu.gvgk@gmail.com or call me on 7760769323.
Thank you!
Details of our work:
- Quick Summary of our work – We have a child on the autism spectrum; we home schooled him till the time he was 10. We have also been running Sambhavam Center for Autism for about 4 years. Currently, we work with about 40 children in our center.
- Our journey as autism parents (2009 – 14) https://pingnama.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/parents-choice/
- Our work at Sambhavam – https://medium.com/staff-you-trust/a-spectrum-of-possibilities-1223888c0775