10 girl and 4 boy members of our sponsorship program for children of single parents, usually mothers, participated in this year’s 3 day gender awareness workshop led by Manju Devi. This topic is very powerful because gender identification continues to pervade society and greatly effects what young people can achieve in life. Many of the students talked emotionally about the difficulties faced by their mothers when they became widows and how disparaging remarks by relatives and neighbours made them feel outcast. Providing a safe situation for youngsters to share their feelings and develop bonds of trust and friendship is extremely valuable.

The girls are delighted with the new bicycle! Thank you to the UK Cycling Team!

Our 16 brave cyclists have completed the first three days of their 10 Day Kangri circuit in support of the Nishtha Trust. Please join us by offering your support via “give as you live/nishtha” cycle tour.

Our hardworking team of Single Women Activist held 2 Block Level meetings in Nishtha community centre and one in a village home in Sharpur. As well as our own doctor and trustees, the women invite resource people from the Health departments, Child development officers, police and an advocate as well as officers from the Labour department. They all participate in sharing information about what services are available to single women and offering useful advice and solutions to their individual problems. On each occasion our cooking team provided a wholesome and delicious meal.

Nishtha wishes you all a very Happy Diwali and year to be gentle on the environment.

The Nishtha single women’s team and three of our staff members along with members of several other local NGOs attended a workshop organized by the Tibetan Centre for conflict Resolution. This was a very interesting and helpful workshop. Not only did we learn a number of useful techniques for dealing with difficult situations but we also had a lot of fun getting to know each other, introducing our NGOs and the work we do. Our single women described the difficulties faced by some of the single parent families in the district and how they are able to benefit them. It was very good to see how well they were able to present their work to the group.

Myself, Ankush and my colleague Vijay Bhadwaj represented Nishtha at a round table meeting of Tibetans and local people held by The Tibet Association at Norbu House in McLeod Ganj. The aim was to discuss how Indians and Tibetans can live together peacefully and how to work to make Dharamsala more beautiful. We talked about Tibetan and Indian culture and the problems we face in this environment with too much traffic, garbage and the very real risk of forest fires. It was a great opportunity to put forward our views and we learned a lot from each other.

The students are busy practicing their songs and dances and our stitching ladies are busy making new costumes for the local Jalmakia dance they are going to perform for our British cycle group. Everyone is very excited and looking forward to welcoming them!

The monsoon has retreated allowing us to re-build our clinic wall next to the new road. It is delightful to see how lovingly local mason Rajinder approaches each rock and river stone, shaping it with his hammer so that it fits exactly to build up the wall. This method of dry-stone walling is traditional in this area but it is difficult these days to find skilled masons to do this work.

This week our new season tuition classes have begin. We started with Indu helping four little children who are not keeping up with their classes but very soon the other children wanted to start so they can prepare well in time for their exams. Now, even though it is still September, the community centre is full of children wanting help with their school work.