Olcott Memorial High School is a secondary school located in

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. It is a free school providing free education, school uniforms, educational materials and nutritious meals to about 500 underprivileged boys and girls.

History

The school was started in 1894 by

Colonel Olcott Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (2 August 1832 – 17 February 1907) was an American military officer, journalist, lawyer, Freemason and the co-founder and first president of the Theosophical Society. Olcott was the first well-known American of Euro ...

with the intention to provide educational upliftment of

Paraiyar Paraiyar, or Parayar or Maraiyar (formerly anglicised as Pariah and Paree), is a caste group found in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and Sri Lanka. Etymology Robert Caldwell, a nineteenth-century missionary and grammarian who ...

children. It was the first Paraiyar school in the city. After the demise of Olcott in 1907, the school was renamed as Olcott Memorial Panchama (Paraiyar) School. The school provides

free education Free education is education funded through government spending or charitable organizations rather than tuition funding. Many models of free higher education have been proposed. Primary school and other comprehensive or compulsory education is fr ...

uniform A uniform is a variety of clothing worn by members of an organization while participating in that organization's activity. Modern uniforms are most often worn by armed forces and paramilitary organizations such as police, emergency services, se ...

books A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical ar ...

, and two daily meals to lot of impoverished rural children in Chennai. The school is a portion of

Theosophical Society Adyar The Theosophy Society was founded by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and others in 1875. The designation 'Adyar' is sometimes added to the name to make it clear that this is the Theosophical Society headquartered there, after the American section ...

's charity work. From 1935 to 1998, the school was Government aided. From 1999, Theosophical Society took the responsibility again.

References

External links

ashanet
- Olcott Memorial High School - Bridge Project
Olcott Memorial School
Theosophy High schools and secondary schools in Chennai Educational institutions established in 1894 1894 establishments in India {{Hinduism-stub