In the spring of 2000 I wrote to the Rev. Jayaseelan, Pastor in Kothapallimitta, on behalf of St. Peter's, proposing a "Companionship." Together with him and his wife Ramila, and their church leaders in Kothapallimitta, a committee of enthusiastic people at St. Peter's -- chaired by myself and Kathy Seabrook -- worked out the aims and principles of our relationship. One of those principles was that the people of Kothapallimitta, not we, would decide what major project (requiring grant money) was most needed. We did make some suggestions. Prince suggested a "mentoring program." I suggested regular visits by a health van from a nearby hospital. Nobody was thinking of a school. But when we asked Jayaseelan and his parishioners in Kothapallimitta for their suggestion, they had already made their choice. As it happened, two months earlier, our St. Peter's Sunday School children had sent the money from their Lenten Mite Boxes ($850) to Kothapallimitta with a note "Please use this money to do something good for the children of Kothapallimitta," and the pastor's wife Ramila had used it to fulfill a dream of hers -- to start a small school in the church building. By the time she and her husband wrote to us to tell us about their decision, the school already had 21 kindergarteners - Hindu, Christian, Muslim; Dalit and "higher caste" -- who, in the words of Pastor Jayaseelan, "sit together, take their naps on mats together, eat together, play together, and study together; that has never happened before in Kothapallimitta!" He explained that the mix of religions and castes was important not only on principle but also because it made the school less vulnerable to caste violence and prevented the Dalit children being "ghettoized" in a school only for them. Education would be non-sectarian and in English. So . . . they had begun the school, and they chose it as our big, joint project. Ramila's dream was a dauntingly big one. But we gulped and said, OK.

Jayaseelan, Ramila, and their local church leaders suggested that we should divide our efforts. St. Peter's outreach money should be used only for the construction of buildings for the school. That appealed to our Vestry and Outreach Commission because it would keep us from having to commit to the open-ended outlay of money that "running a school" would entail. The Kothapallimitta pastorate and Prince Singh would try to convince the Diocese of Madras to purchase the land and to fund and run the operation of what would eventually be a K-12 school. The Diocese of Madras agreed. (The Bishop was no longer the same one who had sent Prince to "Siberia.") The Diocese proposed that it run the school under its excellent Diocesan education program which already operated three large, fine schools in Chennai (Madras). The Bishop engaged an architect to draw up preliminary plans for buildings and estimate the cost. It was the rupee equivalent of $190,000. That, then, became our fundraising target - to be reached through outreach grants and fundraising events at St. Peter's, and outreach grants from the Diocese of Newark.

In September, 2000, Prince Singh left St. Peter's, Morristown, to become the Rector of St. Alban's Episcopal Church, Oakland, a church in northern New Jersey, about a 40 minute drive from St. Peter's. That seemed to us a devastating disaster. Not so. St. Alban's became part of the Companionship.

Ramila's school in Kothapallimitta rapidly grew to a hundred students, meeting in the little church, an old parsonage house, and a van shed. Led by her, we had stated two goals in the documents with which the school was founded, one was "to build a bridge for the children of Kothapallimitta out of abject poverty, illiteracy, and danger from caste violence - to positions that are reserved for Dalits under the Indian constitution in the universities and civil service of India. Many of these positions remain vacant, hopelessly out of reach for children like those of Kothapallimitta who have no way to acquire the English proficiency and high school education that would qualify them. The goal of our school is to make it possible for these young people to qualify for these positions." The second goal was "to bring young children, every school day of the year, into a community where there is a mix of religions and castes in an atmosphere of equality and respect - where it is simply taken for granted that they will get along, have fun together and learn, and treat one another well." (In other schools in the area, Dalits have to sit in back, use different sets of drinking cups and dishes, and more or less just audit the classes.)

The second goal began to be met the day the school opened (as Rev. Jayaseelan had written us). The first was far more difficult, but in October 2005, although the school was not yet K-12 (it adds one grade each year and at that time educated LK through 5th grade), we made a huge, unexpected jump ahead toward that goal. Two 5th year girls from our school won scholarships in an incredibly stiff competition that awarded only 20 scholarships for over 4000 applicants. The scholarships allow the winners to continue their education at no cost at top-notch government boarding schools. No Dalit child from Kothapallimitta would have been able to achieve this before our school existed. Our "bridge" had worked, even before it was fully built! Though Jayaseelan and Ramila had by then moved to another posting, replaced by the Rev. Earnest and his wife Nilipher, and School Administrator Thaines Raja and his wife Helen, Ramila's dream was coming true in a big way!