Did you know that the most effective way of reducing global heating is to stop putting organic waste into landfill. Methane, which is responsible for one third of global heating, is generated in landfill dumps when waste food and other organic matter decompose in an oxygen depleted environment. Separating your kitchen and garden waste and making compost is so easy and obvious. Why does everyone not do it?

Over the past month we have called the girls who attended our adolescent girls trainings last July to four one day follow up workshops run by our doctors and Ravindra and Vijay. It was wonderful to see the girls again and to be assured that they had not only retained most of what we discussed but also that they have become more confident and enthusiastic to attend further trainings at Nishtha.

Glorious calendula picked on the Nishtha farm

Everyone at Nishtha really appreciated having Sapne, a student maths educator from Saje Sapne with us as an intern for the past two and a half months. She was loved by the students she taught and fitted in so well, helping with all our community centre programs from school nutrition distribution and environment awareness events to participating in the workshops, sessions for disabled children and single women’s events. Thank you Sapne – we will miss your cheerful smile and ready helping

hand!

Despite the drought – or maybe even because of it, we harvested a bumper crop of pure organic turmeric on our farm this week. All the beds in the patient’s room are now taken up with the chopped corms drying before they are taken to the mill to be ground into wonderful rich orange curative powder. We will have plenty for sale this year!

Dr Barbara is back and has jumped straight into attending the outreach health education clinics, making sure everything is going smoothly. These villagers were fascinated by her description of how to very effectively and simply relieve night time knee pain by wrapping the knees in cabbage leaves. As usual Suresh checks peoples blood pressure and Mohinder talks about environmental issues.

We are disappointed that the local people who suffered a devastating flood because of garbage blocking their stream, appear to have completely forgotten the incident. Our team found that again the garbage is accumulating in what is at present a dry watercourse but which becomes a roaring river when the monsoon rains come. So sad!

We were delighted to have the opportunity to show the British Deputy High Commissioner around our clinic and community centre. She was interested to hear about our health and community programs and promised to keep touch with us. .

We were pleased to host a group of 15 students from Spiti, Meghalaya, Sikkim and Manipur for an environmental exposure visit. Mohinder took them around and explained our environmental program in detail. They were very interested in seeing our waste management techniques and learning about organic farming.

It’s taking a while, from selecting the best sturdy BATA shoes in the market, measuring the children’s feet and placing the order until all 167 pairs of shoes are distributed to the primary school children in 9 local primary schools. When the task is finally done, all the children will be well equipped with shoes and 2 pairs of warm socks for any eventuality the weather will turn up this year!