Education has always been important to longtime Harvard resident Piali De. Her dedication is evident both in the time and energy she invested as a member of the Harvard School Committee, as well as in the school she recently established in her native India. The school opened its doors January 26, India’s Republic Day. Although De could not be there for the grand opening, she was told that 1,000 children showed up for the celebration. One hundred students attended the first day of classes, and current enrollment is about 130.

When De’s father passed way two years ago, she and her brother inherited a six-acre piece of land in Baruipur, a rural village 30 kilometers outside of Kolkata. “My father developed the land and put in some very nice buildings,” De said. “I think it was his dream to build an international university there.”

With Piali in Massachusetts and her brother in Texas, the Des debated different uses for the property and ultimately decided to set up a school for the local community of Baruipur. “I’m a big fan of education,” she said. “I advocated all along that the best thing we could do was to start a children’s school.”

This past January, De spent five days in Baruipur, where she talked to community members about ideas for the school. “The community there was very wanting of us to start a school for the children, and seeing how badly they wanted us to do something for them we decided to get started right away,” she said.

De talked to community leaders to help decide the best way to structure her program. “I didn’t want to start a school that would be in competition with the government schools,” she explained. Instead of setting up a traditional “nine to five” academic school, De created a free extracurricular program for students in grades one through five.

The school runs classes in the morning from 7 to 9 a.m., before the public elementary schools start. During this time the teachers help the kids with homework and studying. At 10 a.m. the students go to their traditional elementary school, where they remain until 3 p.m. At 3:30, De’s school re-opens in the afternoon for what she considers the “fun program.” The afternoon program currently includes art, yoga, and music classes, and De has plans to expand it further.

The next step that De envisions is bringing in an Internet connection to the school. “No one there knows how to operate the Internet, and I can’t even imagine how much their sense of the world is going to change once they are able to do that. Right now, all they know is how to farm that little patch of land behind their thatched hut; no one ever exposes them to anything bigger.”

De also worries about the threat that the current expansion of Kalkata poses to this rural community. “Every time I’ve been there I’ve watched the city creep out closer and closer toward the village. I worry … if these people don’t know how to do anything other than farming, what is going to happen to them?”

For this reason, De feels that one of the most beneficial things they can do for the village is provide education for the adults of Baruipur. However, she recognizes that this will require much more planning and organization than the programs they have implemented for the children.

The village has plans to begin construction on a new public hospital, and administrators there have expressed hope that De’s school could help train citizens to act as orderlies. While she is very excited at this prospect, De acknowledges that there is a lot that will need to be done before they are at the point where this could become a reality.

“Right now we don’t have the people connections there to get these programs going,” she said. “We’ve got to deepen our relations with the community by keeping the school running well.”

In the meantime, De is happy with how things are going. “There are working pains that go along with it, of course,” she noted, “but we’re committed to having something here for the children, and eventually having something for the adults.”

“My philosophy in life is to always do the right thing the best that you can. I had always thought that I’d maybe do this after my kids were older and I’d settled down, but my conscience got to me,” she said. “As much as my plate was already full, it got to the point where it was impossible to say no.”