It’s Cricket Season again! 15 local teams have already signed up and the tournament organised by enthusiastic local boys has been the focus of attention for the village for the past week. Nishtha cleared the ground and brought in tractors of clay to make the pitch. We also provided new kit and a loudspeaker to announce the match points and results. It’s going to be an exciting month!

On Christmas Day, since the school was on holiday our staff decided to take the 15 children who come to our after school program for a full day picnic up on the hillside above Rakkar village. We carried food to make a big pot of khichari with vegetables and curd. While it cooked the children snacked on lots of namkeen and Gachak and played all kinds of games, drawing and cutting out, dancing and loving being out in the clear air in the winter sunshine.

Single Women’s Block level meetings take place every 6 months in the 3 areas our team covers.  This time Nishtha decided to lend support to the women by sending a staff member to each meeting. Ravindra went to Narwana for the Nagrota block meeting, Dr Kusum went to Rait and Vijay went to Gaggal for the Kangra block meeting. All three returned enthusiastically praising the organisation of the meetings and telling how they spoke to the women who attended about the work Nishtha does and how we can support them. They all felt it was very useful and our single women activists were pleased.

A hastily put together Wenlido workshop for 11 Anganwari workers from district Chamba was held in December, organised by Deepa who had met Minakshi, an Anganwari teacher from Sihunta during one of our health camps with Dr. Kusum. Keen to learn, they picked up the techniques quickly and spent up to 9.0 in the evening discussing. Our trainers felt this was a very fulfilling workshop as these women work in very remote villages where there is a lot of violence and confusion about what is and what is not acceptable behavior, especially within families. They were very grateful saying: “We are new women now! We are not the same as when we came. Now we are fearless and confident”.   

Two very valuable two day workshops on Non Violent Communication were held for Nishtha staff and single women earlier this month. A very experienced trainer named Chitra was invited from Delhi who led the groups in a voyage of discovery, thinking and becoming aware of their feelings and needs and particularly about how to deal with their own and others responses to difficult situations.

With winter coming our staff checked the condition of the government primary school children’s shoes and socks and found them to be in very poor condition. They set about taking the measurements of the 113 poor children from 5 local primary schools, ordering new shoes and 2 pairs of socks each. Now, every one of those children have good footwear to see them through the cold, wet months ahead. 

Furthering Nishtha’s collaboration with Dharamshala Waste Warriors, last week our local school children engaged in an exciting cleanup program along with 70 youngsters from Delhi. It was a challenging but very productive day with 6 large sacks of plastic waste and glass bottles collected from the local forest area and the production of a series of brilliant environmental posters. At the end they all enjoyed tea and samosas together, expressing their delight at meeting and working together for the sake of raising awareness of the damage done to the environment by casually discarding  our waste 

100 single women celebrated “Bheena Dooj”  on 1st Nov along with our Nishtha Trustees, staff and some students. They put together a wonderful program of songs, talks plays and dances, appreciating their sisterhood and support for each other on  this special occasion. The students performed a Gaddi dance in full costume and the school children joined in with a skit about the environment and the need to protect trees.

20-25 children started attending tuition classes in the community centre at the beginning of October in preparation for their exams. Two teachers, Sakshi and Sanjay focus on maths which is the most difficult and worrying subject for every student but also help the children with their other subjects when needed.  

Following the advice of the Director of Agriculture, North Region when he visited our farm, we decided to plant some tea plants on unused parts of the land. The Government tea department provided 150 tea plants at a subsidized rate and trained our farming team who then dug over 100 pits in unused spaces and planted the tea plants according to the instruction given by tea department.