A three day leadership training was organised to enhance our single women activists’ abilities to think critically, lead effectively and work with a positive attitude. Our trainer, Manju used lots of interesting practical activities for this group who are not so comfortable with reading and writing.

A very busy team protecting the newly planted trees from the local goats with bamboo tree guards.

Rakkar youth social and environment club held a meeting in Nishtha CC hall to plan their upcoming program. The club has 12 active members and are urging more youth in local area to join so they can work impressively and effectively in the village.

During August Nishtha sponsorship students have been using their weekly Sunday meeting to learn about the present environment crisis. We talked about the causes of the crisis, watched clips about movements and individual efforts to save the environment and, convinced of the importance of tree planting, we planted over 100 trees. We want to try to understand how we can live sustainably on this planet.

Nishtha Farming team busy at work between monsoon downpours keeping the land in order and preparing for tea planting.

Ravinder Kaur held a very successful Nishtha summer vacation program on the theme of Environmental awareness. They studied the big picture issues: global warming and how our lives are dependent on the condition of our world and also the details: to protect trees, grow plants, not to waste resources and food and above all not to throw plastic!

Nishtha environment teams were invited by the Tenacious Bee Collective Pvt. Ltd to address a meeting of local women in the Badsar Panchyat near Jia. Our team was invited by Kirna Devi, the village Mayor to present Nishtha’s ground breaking work on management of plastic waste in Rakkar village, the local women were very happy and agreed to use plastic waste as sitting mats.

Nishtha Activist Vijay attended a four day workshop on understanding how to raise gender conscious boys, facilitated by Project Raise organization. He learned how to approach the boys through very specific and effective modules which will help the boys to modify their attitudes. He is now equipped with the facilitator skills and knowledge essential for holding transformative workshops for adolescent boys.

As the monsoon approaches we have relocated the little used Samlekarnath school water filter to the centre of Rakkar village where many more people can take advantage of the filtered water.

It’s calendula season and our staff are busy preparing calendular ointment which is a wonderful healing salve. Fresh flowers from our farm are part-dried and soaked in linseed oil. After straining it’s warmed gently with beeswax.