Pallikoodam
Encyclopedia
Pallikoodam is a high school in the Kalathilpady
area of Kottayam
in Kerala
Pallikkoodam
. It was established as Corpus Christi High School in 1967 by educator and women's rights activist, Mary Roy
. The term "Pallikkoodam" means school in the Tamil
and Malayalam
languages.
of the school was designed by architect
Laurie Baker
and includes a swimming pool
, basketball
and volleyball courts, a football field
, an 800-seat auditorium
, and platforms for theatre
and other performing arts
. The school has a full-time faculty for sport
s, drama
, music
, dance
and other arts.
, EXNORA, and several NGOs in Kerala for projects. Victim relief efforts have been organized by the school in the wake of disaster
s such as the Orissa cyclone
s and the 2005 Tsunami
. The school was a subject of a documentary
by the India
n broadcaster Doordarshan
entitled "Mary Roy and Corpus Christi". Projects of the school have been featured on BBC World and Star News. In 2006, the school won the 'TCS IT Wiz trophy'. In 2009 , they again won the 'TCS IT Wiz 2009 Trophy'.
The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has formulated the Municipal Wastes Management and Handling Rules, 2000 . Bala Bhu Bhadratha, an environmental organization started in Pallikoodam, has filed a Writ of Mandamus in the High Court of Kerala, praying that these Rules be implemented in Kottayam.
Pallikoodam has also fought against the pollution in the Meenchil River and the use of Endosulfan in India. The school has distributed hundreds of waste compost units , teaching people to segregate waste, and the students of Pallikoodam have often cleaned up the nearby Kalathipady road , Karipal Hospital area.
Kalathilpady
Kalathilpady is an area on the suburbs of Kottayam town in the state of Kerala in south India. It is about 3 km from the town center located on the Kottayam Kumili road....
area of Kottayam
Kottayam
Kottayam is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative capital of the Kottayam district. Kottayam Kottayam (Malayalam: കോട്ടയം) is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative...
in Kerala
Kerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
Pallikkoodam
Pallikkoodam
In Tamil and Malayalam schools are popularly known as 'Pallikkoodam'.The real meaning of 'Pallikkoodam' is 'a place for education established by and adjacent to a holy Place'. The word "Pallikkoodam" originates from the Malayalam root words: "Palli" and "Koodam" meaning 'room or hall'. The word...
. It was established as Corpus Christi High School in 1967 by educator and women's rights activist, Mary Roy
Mary Roy
Mary Roy is an Indian educator and women's rights activist, who won a lawsuit in 1986, against the inheritance legislation of her Keralite Syrian Christian community in the Supreme Court...
. The term "Pallikkoodam" means school in the Tamil
Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
and Malayalam
Malayalam language
Malayalam , is one of the four major Dravidian languages of southern India. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India with official language status in the state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry. It is spoken by 35.9 million people...
languages.
The campus
The campusCampus
A campus is traditionally the land on which a college or university and related institutional buildings are situated. Usually a campus includes libraries, lecture halls, residence halls and park-like settings...
of the school was designed by architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
Laurie Baker
Laurie Baker
Laurence Wilfred "Laurie" Baker was an award-winning British-born Indian architect, renowned for his initiatives in cost-effective energy-efficient architecture and for his unique space utilisation and simple but beautiful aesthetic sensibility...
and includes a swimming pool
Swimming pool
A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, or simply a pool, is a container filled with water intended for swimming or water-based recreation. There are many standard sizes; the largest is the Olympic-size swimming pool...
, basketball
Basketball court
In basketball, the basketball court is the playing surface, consisting of a rectangular floor with tiles at either end. In professional or organized basketball, especially when played indoors, it is usually made out of a wood, often maple, and highly polished...
and volleyball courts, a football field
Association football pitch
An association football pitch is the playing surface for the game of association football made of turf. Its dimensions and markings are defined by Law 1 of the Laws of the Game, "The Field of Play".All line markings on the pitch form part of the area which they define...
, an 800-seat auditorium
Auditorium
An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances at venues such as theatres. For movie theaters, the number of auditoriums is expressed as the number of screens.- Etymology :...
, and platforms for theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
and other performing arts
Performing arts
The performing arts are those forms art which differ from the plastic arts insofar as the former uses the artist's own body, face, and presence as a medium, and the latter uses materials such as clay, metal or paint which can be molded or transformed to create some physical art object...
. The school has a full-time faculty for sport
Sport
A Sport is all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants. Sport may be competitive, where a winner or winners can be identified by objective means, and may require a degree...
s, drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
, music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, dance
Dance
Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
and other arts.
Activities
The school has partnered with activist organizations including GreenpeaceGreenpeace
Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...
, EXNORA, and several NGOs in Kerala for projects. Victim relief efforts have been organized by the school in the wake of disaster
Disaster
A disaster is a natural or man-made hazard that has come to fruition, resulting in an event of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic change to the environment...
s such as the Orissa cyclone
Cyclone
In meteorology, a cyclone is an area of closed, circular fluid motion rotating in the same direction as the Earth. This is usually characterized by inward spiraling winds that rotate anticlockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere of the Earth. Most large-scale...
s and the 2005 Tsunami
Tsunami
A tsunami is a series of water waves caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water, typically an ocean or a large lake...
. The school was a subject of a documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
by the India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n broadcaster Doordarshan
DoorDarshan
Doordarshan is an Indian public service broadcaster, a division of Prasar Bharati. It is one of the largest broadcasting organizations in India in terms of the infrastructure of studios and transmitters. Recently, it has also started Digital Terrestrial Transmitters. On September 15, 2009,...
entitled "Mary Roy and Corpus Christi". Projects of the school have been featured on BBC World and Star News. In 2006, the school won the 'TCS IT Wiz trophy'. In 2009 , they again won the 'TCS IT Wiz 2009 Trophy'.
Environmental and social role
Pallikoodam School has championed for several socio-environmental causes in Kottayam. It protested against the official apathy regarding the Vadavathoor Dump problem, and formed the Citizen's Action Forum which discusses such issues. There was a situation when there was lack of water at the Institute Of child Health in Kottayam, It was found that there was adequate water supply to the I.C.H, but the Class IV employees had diverted it into their own quarters where it was being used to irrigate crops. Due to the sustained agitation by the CAF, the water supply was restored.The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has formulated the Municipal Wastes Management and Handling Rules, 2000 . Bala Bhu Bhadratha, an environmental organization started in Pallikoodam, has filed a Writ of Mandamus in the High Court of Kerala, praying that these Rules be implemented in Kottayam.
Pallikoodam has also fought against the pollution in the Meenchil River and the use of Endosulfan in India. The school has distributed hundreds of waste compost units , teaching people to segregate waste, and the students of Pallikoodam have often cleaned up the nearby Kalathipady road , Karipal Hospital area.