Nishtha Single Women’s activists tirelessly held a series of important meetings this month including the 6 month block meeting attended by 80 rural women, a training in communications skills and a series of meetings with village council members to try to implement a scheme to get faster, cheaper more effective legal representation for women at Panchayat level. Their work really has effect empowering the most deprived section of society.

Wenlido training for 15 village girls between the age of 10-13 years was held at Nishtha by Ravindra and Prity. The training followed a similar pattern to the adults training , only replacing a few topics not suitable for this age group with some interesting games. The girls were very happy and confident talking about themselves in the group and enjoyed learning new skills and techniques to defend themselves.

Nishtha Diwali sports program for our local school children was held on October 28th, the first day of the week long school holiday, on Rakkar playground. This was an open sports program which means everybody could take part in any game they liked; girl or boy, young or adolescent, everybody had a chance to play. We invited 3 Government and one local private school for this event which our community centre staff had started preparing two weeks ago. Clearing bushes, removing stones from the ground, purchase and checking of sports material, ordering refreshments, preparing prizes and putting together a schedule of games was all done by our staff.

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Last Saturday the Welsh St John’s ambulance team of First Aid trainers spent a very helpful and productive day at Nishtha teaching 25 local young people the basics of first aid particularly for use particularly in case of a local disaster. They learned the ABC of first aid, how to do simple dressings and slings, how to treat burns, how to put injured or shocked patients into the rescue position and how to shift those with serious injuries. Thank you Des Kitto and all your team!

After school tuition classes for over 20 Government school children are held daily in Nishtha community centre hall. Retired teacher Ravindra Kaur is training Sakhshi, one of our recent graduates and Nishtha staff Ravindra and Ankush to effectively help the children to read and understand their school work.

The new group of 12 students sponsored through college by Nishtha are lucky to have our new Trustee Pooja Anand as their English teacher. Each Sunday they come for a meeting, have one hour on the computers with Vijay, sometimes learn local music and dance and now have very fun English classes. The students are all very happy to have this opportunity to get together.

Thanks to the UK Trust donation, new games, building blocks, model animals, drums and balls delighted the children in the kindergartens on the mountainside last week, providing much needed stimulus.

Last week Nishtha Single Women’s team organized a vibrant 2 day residential seminar in Nishtha Community Center for 46 senior single women with Dr. Kishwar Shirali as the primary resource person. The slogan for the meeting was “Maan Ki Awaz Ka Agaj” which means, ‘’Begin to listen to the voice of the heart’’.

By the end of the packed 2 day programme everyone agreed that they would like to participate in future workshops to learn more about their rights and about what government schemes are available to them.

Please see the full report here.