THE GATEWAY SCHOOL

The Awakening Foundation is partnering with The Gateway School to help provide the resources needed to educate and house some of the children that live in the poorest villages outside of Rajahmundry, India. The school is the vision of Gateway Ministries leader VSC Prasad, and his wife Sunnee- who serves as the headteacher of the school.

With financial help from Third Day’s  ‘Come Together Fund', 3 acres of land was purchased and construction took place over a 2 year period before the Gateway School was opened in 2009.  The school was supported by the ‘Come Together Fund’ in its early years, including purchasing the first ever school buses, and the construction of the Gateway Hostel for residential students from difficult family backgrounds.

The Gateway School has educated over 2,000 children from the rural villages near Rajahmundry in the state of Andhra Pradesh, and there are currently nearly 300 students attending school. Approximately 80% of these students are the first in their family to attend school and receive a formal education. 

The school was created to help break the poverty and deprivation cycles through education; specifically, providing an education in English and Telugu (the local language), helping students access a higher education and a skilled workforce they normally would not have access to. The Gateway School students consistently score high in all state exams and government inspections. Although the school is approved and regulated by the Indian government, it does not receive government funding.

Since The Awakening Foundation has begun to support the Gateway School we have been able to provide salaries for thew teaching staff and oversee several capital projects-

*In 2020 we purchased a brand new school bus, and added a second one in 2023. Many of the pupils at the school live in small villages several miles away, and so a school bus route is vital for them to attend the school. The 2 buses each begin the day early, collecting pupils, and make sure they arrive back in their villages safely in the early evening.

*In early 2022, the Awakening Foundation enabled the Gateway School  to undergo a refurbishment-the first in nearly 10 years! Included in the work was a new entrance gate for the school, repainting of the whole school exterior, new desks and seating in every classroom, each classroom repainted, windows and doors upgraded where needed, and fans installed in the dining area and staff room.

*Our 2025 project was to construct a rest room facility and shower block for the school-especially helpful for the 30 pupils who live onsite in the Gateway Hostel. The school had been relying on a small and inadequate restrooms constructed in the original building program.

Thanks to a grant from ‘The Better Life Foundation’, we have been able to construct 3 new classrooms on the second floor of this new facility.