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!

Nishtha Single Women’s team worked very hard to organise three meetings this month which each brought together over 60 women from the different areas in which they work. The meeting gives isolated village women the opportunity to meet health, welfare department and legal officers to guide them how to seek any help they require. The Nishtha team talked about the services Nishtha offers and provided back up organisation and cooked lunch for everyone. In Rait, Dr. Shreya, Mohinder, Vijay and Ravindra stepped in when the government officials were unable to attend at the last minute due to a government rally and held a very interesting and productive meeting.

The second of our village cluster meetings to discuss the issues of waste management with the community was held last Wednesday. It was a highly participatory event with people putting forward their ideas and discussing the problems related to the amount of plastic and other waste being produced in the village. Everyone agreed that each family should be responsible for segregating their waste and disposing of it appropriately.

Launching our winter program of environment awareness meetings, over 60 local people attended the cluster meeting held at Nag Mandir last week. Mohinder discussed the current situation regarding waste management in the area and we committed to continuing our work collecting segregated plastic waste. The children performed a short play about what to do with different kinds of waste and Vijay Bhadwaj sang our garbage song along with the children and the team. Everyone enjoyed eating samosas and dancing!

Nishtha Community Centre hosted a three-day gender training for our sponsorship students. Because they are a group who have already got to know each other well they responded admirably to trainers Maju, Ravindra and Vijay and were able to cover in depth a number of very important topics related to their gender identity, the demands of society and understanding what are unhealthy friendships and the dangers of social media. The group gave great feedback and really appreciated having a free space to talk about the issues that really concern them.