Students of Classes I to IV from a 114-year-old school with Theosophical Society roots have taken on a unique mission to assist their peers in Wayanad, who were affected by the recent landslides, by handwriting class notes to replace
those lost in the disaster.

Over 300 students of Jinarajadas Aided Lower Primary School in Marad in neighbouring Kozhikode district will be preparing the class notes. While about 30 students with good handwriting are writing down the notes, the rest are providing a helping hand by organising the papers that would be photocopied.

The convener of the school resource group, P.C. Chinchu, who is handling the notebook project, told The Telegraph on Thursday: “They use their breaks and spare time to write notes for Malayalam, English, Arabic, environmental studies and mathematics. Once the work is over in a few days, we will get them printed and spiral-bind them to be distributed to the students in Wayanad.”

The school has secured permission from the education department in Kozhikode and Wayanad for the project meant only to help children who have lost their notebooks.

“We have identified 138 students now accommodated in relief camps in Wayanad and we plan to hand over the notes in a few days,” she said, alluding to the Wayanad district education department trying to resume classes by August 20 so that children will have a few days to prepare for the quarterly exams beginning in the first week of September.

“At least they will have the notes to pick up from where they left off. The notes will also help teachers cover the portions yet to be taught,” she said. The five subjects will be bound together as one book to make it easier for the recipient students to handle. “Once their schools resume classes, they would have their notebooks. Our initiative is only to fill the gap,” she said.

Students from other schools have donated stationery and notebooks to the affected children, and the government will distribute fresh copies of textbooks and bags.

The school was started by a local family member of the Theosophical Society, who had named it after Curuppumullage Jinarajadasa, the Sri Lankan who was the organisation’s fourth president.

The school retained the name even after it changed hands with entrepreneur and industrialist V.K.C. Mammed Koya, who owns the VKC footwear brand, taking it over and running it as part of his charity initiatives.

On whether the notes prepared by students of a different school and taught by different teachers could be a problem, Chinchu said all schools follow a common curriculum. “Teachers of all schools following the state syllabus are trained under the same system. We follow the same handbook and courses on how to teach. There won’t be any difficulty for the students in Wayanad to follow the notes we prepared,” she said.