Umrao Singh Memorial School (USMS)
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Allahabad, India
Mrs. Sushiela Singh raised her family in the city of Allahabad in northern India. When her children were all grown and her husband of more than 30 years 
died, she turned her attention to a subject close to her heart: providing education to girls from poor families so they could break free from the vicious cycle of poverty.
She started in 1967 by tutoring a couple of neighborhood girls who wouldn’t have had a chance to get educated otherwise. She asked their parents to pay twenty cents a month so that instead of receiving charity, they would be contributing toward their children’s education.
Then another girl came. And then another.
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The empty rooms formerly occupied by her own children were soon filled with the chatter of dozens of students, who were now “her children.” Soon her family home became a small school, with several teachers and additional rooms that had to be built in the backyard.
Lacking funds and resources, she had only her dogged determination to support her. Mrs. Singh sold most of her possessions and literally built the school one brick at a time. She was known to carry home bricks that she found on the street, so that “her children’s school” could be built.
When she died in 1989 at the age of 79, she was still putting in twelve hours a day at the school. By that time, there were 400 students from kindergarten through the 8th grade. To honor her beloved husband, she named the school after him: Umrao Singh Memorial School (USMS).
Today it is an “Intermediate College”—the equivalent of a U.S. high school—serving more than 1,000 students through the 12th grade, including boys up to the 5th grade.
