About Premametta School
In Buddha Gaya, there are a lot of children who cannot go to school and missing the opportunity to receive a foundational education.
It is caused mainly by “poverty” and repeated same in the generations.
The ignorance of the parents about the needs of basic education is also the cause of this issue.

For the farmers, even a small child is a really important work force in their field.
 Many parents make their children work on the field in order to support a daily life.
In that way, children are missing the opportunity learn how to read, write and how to calculate.
The ones who are not be able to receive the fundamental education are facing troubles when they are grown and try to sell crops in the market.
They have to accept unfair contract without knowing.
In that way, it is so hard to get out of the spiral of poverty by them.

To change this situation, we are visiting villages around school frequently to convince all the patents to send their children to school.
 This has enabled many children to start coming to school although they still have to work on the field.
In our school, we teach not only all the basic subjects but also English and Yoga to widen children’s choice for future carrier.
Furthermore, lunch is provided to the children whose nutrition is insufficient.
 One meal per day is secured for those children and it helps them grow up. These activities are four fundamental activities of the present PremaMetta School and we believe these are inseparable to achieve our goal.

We are also working on other activities such as finding child sponsors, collecting used clothes, raising donation,etc.
All our activities are fully supported by the non-paid volunteers.

← Here is the overview of our activity (Japanese only for now).

You can click the arrows to flick the pages..

 

Anup Kumar

Anup Kumar

Founder

Prema Metta school was established in 2006 by Anup Kumar. When Anup was a little, he was not able to go to school for family reasons. When he was 5 or 6, he followed his father to go work in the vegetable field, and while he played in the field to wait for his father, he met a monk who begged for meals. Anup offered his food to the monk and the monk prayed for him in return. After that day, he saw the same monk again and offered his food every time. The monk thought Anup would be a good monk, and he started to teach him about Theravada Buddhism at his temple.

At the beginning, Anup just enjoyed getting some sweets in the temple, but gradually he started to have interest in learning Buddhism. Anup was 6 years-old when he left his family and home for living in the temple. He went to Himalaya, Nepal and other places to practice meditation and Buddhist teaching with his teacher. He lived with no trouble but he was always thought about his family, local people especially kids in his village. Most of monks came from a wealthy family but his family was not. His parents were sick and family suffered from poverty. When his practice would complete in just another 6 months to become a teacher, he thought “if I become a Buddhist teacher, I can do nothing for my family and the people in need, as the precepts will not allow me to even touch money”.  He decided to leave the temple to help his family and the local people.

When Anup returned to his village, he was shocked to see many adult people not working at all and little children begging on the streets. Anup thought “I did not go to school but I learnt English and Japanese at the temple. I learnt many things. If people have a chance to study when they are young, then their future will be changed”. So he got a travel guide license with his language skills and started to work. He saved his money little by little and started a school with only a piece of groundsheet when he was 17 years-old. It has been 10 years since then, and thanks to the help and support of kind people all around the world who made donations and worked as volunteers, the school building with a playground has been built.

Nagdev Kumar Raz

Nagdev Kumar Raz

Headmaster

Nagdev graduated our school and has been supporting us as a volunteer staff since then. He became a member of our trust in 2016, and assumed the headmaster in 2017.
Vijay Kumar

Vijay Kumar

Teacher

Vijay has been a vital member of Premametta since the school started. He is also admired by the kids.
Yuko Momose

Yuko Momose

Staff

Yuko is a supporting member of the school, and also runs the adjacent guesthouse.