Every day Ravi picks up our special needs children and their carers to take them to Tapovan clinic where they receive exercise and physiotherapy from their homes, treatments crucial to their mobility and ability to manage daily tasks. Shaksham, Priya and Mithali also attend the Tapovan primary school in the mornings while the younger children go straight to the clinic to join in the play sessions there. On Saturdays he picks up the children and brings them to Nishtha Community centre where they enjoy playing and drawing together and our doctors are able to check their health and progress.

On Saturday Dr Shreya, Ravindra, Vijay and Mohinder held a one day follow up workshop for the girls from the villages above Sharpur who attended a two day adolescent health training 6 months ago. Girls from the villages are very shy and find it difficult to speak out and respond so Ravindra and Vijay introduced games to help them relax, Dr Shreya held a quiz to review their knowledge of good foods to eat and Mohinder held a highly interactive session on first aid. We hope the girls went away with some useful knowledge and a bit more confidence.

Our dedicated team of six Single Women Activists reach into the villages drawing together widows and other women living alone for meetings in which they discuss and address their particular issues and help them to overcome their difficulties. This much appreciated service empowers and gives strength to those who feel disregarded and helpless in their community.

Our efforts to provide additional nutrition for a total of 364 children in 10 local schools and anganwaris takes a great deal of dedication and organisation. Our staff visit the wholesale vegetable market in the early morning. In the community centre they carefully weigh and divide each item making boxes for each school for smooth delivery. This week our jeep broke down when they were high up on the mountain so it had to be rescued and repaired. Fortunately all is well and the work will go on to benefit the children.

The farming team harvested 5 kilos of turmeric, 8 kilos of ginger and a massive 10 kilo pumpkin in the winter sun this week.

We rejoice at being able to work with the Kangra Youth Charitable Trust to help provide a hot meal to over 500 attendants of patients at Tanda Hospital last Sunday and with the Saadho Sangha Foundation to distribute much needed blankets to the very poor in our area. Thank you to both organisations for stepping forward to ease the chill of winter.

Nishtha Internal Complaints Committee was set up to address any incidents of sexual harassment or abuse in the workplace, under the direction of Kamla Bhasin nearly 10 years ago. As several members of the committee had changed, we revived the committee this year and now have 5 standing members who felt that it would be helpful to engage Aatreyee Sen, an expert in child and human rights to explain the purpose of Nishtha ICC to the staff. The meeting last week involved all the staff who fully participated in a lively morning of activities and discussions. Everyone who attends Nishtha programs will also be made aware of their rights and the complaints procedure.

The library has had an infusion of new exciting books published by Tulik and Pratham. They were curated by our guest Mithila who worked with Ravindra and Vijay to display them and then on Monday held a lovely reading session with the children. A great way to spend a cold winters afternoon.

We are delighted to have been able to upgrade the 7 very old computers used by the children and students in our community centre. Thank you to the UK Trust cyclists for allowing us to use their left-over funds for running the trip to do this! Thank you to Brian for doing all the hard work of ordering and installing the new components.

Nishtha students decided to see in the New Year on the hillside above Tatri village where there is an old shepherds hut and a glorious plain grassy meadow. They had a wonderful time hiking, cooking, singing and dancing around the camp fire, and in the morning warming up by playing cricket and pitu, the local sport of knocking down a pile of stones with a roll of socks.