Empowering Young Minds

1. Chitrari Asha School, a school for children with special needs, was inaugurated by Shri EP Jayarajan, MLA on 24 October 2012. The school; which functions under the aegis of Ayyappa Bhajana Samithi a registered charitable society in Chitrari, a small village in Kannur District of Kerala; was the brainchild of Lt Gen Vinod Nayanar, recently retired from the Army and Dr C Ravindran Nambiar a renowned writer and scholar; both settled at Chitrari. The headmistress of the school, Mrs Sreekala PC is a trained special educator who earlier worked with CAPS Special School, Chovva, Kannur. The school presently has 50 children (day scholars) on its rolls and is planning to take the figure up to 60 in the near future. Till very recently this was the only such school in our panchayat and the neighbouring panchayats. 

2.  We began with strength of 9 children in a one room building. By end 2015 we acquired a second hand school van consequent to which our strength rose from 12 to 25. In anticipation we had constructed an additional classroom, toilet and kitchenette adjoining the existing school building with a lot of help from several local agencies for construction and basic furnishing. Our total school premises then comprised an area of 10 cents which is the property of our charitable society. 

3. In 2016 we received a grant from Tata Trusts for a period of three years thanks to which we added five classrooms after acquiring another 15 cents of land on lease and a proper 14 seater school bus (after disposing of the old van) and developed the necessary infrastructure to carry out all school activities reasonably well. Since then there has been no looking back. Our strength increased from 25 to 50 by end 2019 with matching increase in teaching and non teaching staff, and academic and vocational training activities.

4. In 2020 we were supported for a year by SBI Foundation. During the year with SBI Foundation funding we constructed a vocational centre and training area as the first floor of our building. Since 2022 we have been supported by Azim Premji Foundation.  We are now counted among the foremost special schools of the district. Our children are largely from very poor families who cannot afford to pay even minimum school fees; hence the school runs on State Govt. grants, corporate grants and donations from well wishers.