Last week we were delighted that Caroline Rowett, the Deputy British High Commissioner came from Chandigarh to spend a day with us. We took her up to two of the village schools that we work with where we played with and read to the children and had a wonderful time. She also visited one of our outreach Health Education camps in the village where our clinic team were talking to a group of women while the kindergarten children played in the next room. After lunch, Vijay and Ravindra held an art workshop for local children in the Community Centre which she happily joined in. As she left, one of the children presented her with a handmade card which she said she would cherish as a memory of the day!

Rasma, whose husband sold the land on which the clinic is built to Krishan Nath Baba in 1985 was felicitated on her retirement after 20 long years of service by Dr Barbara and the clinic team. We were happy to visit her, surrounded by her caring family and friends on the veranda of her home.

Today 17 Tibetan students, organised by Lha Charitable Trust visited Nishtha to learn about what Nishtha does in the community. Our staff showed them round introducing them to the community centre and our environment programs. They were very interested and asked lots of questions and went away with many positive ideas, motivated to segregate their trash and to protect our fragile environment.

We are very happy to have found a team who are prepared to undertake the challenging work of constructing the activity pavilion which will occupy the area on the farm which is too rocky to be made into fields. Instead we will have a raised platform with a traditional style roof with a wide view of the mountains and fields around us. With a bit of luck and hard work we will have at least the platform ready by August, in time for the next set of adolescents and Wenlido workshops.

Due to receipt of a generous donation, his years school nutrition program includes 3 new primary schools and 102 extra children to feed. All praise to our team who eagerly worked out how to manage this increase by delivering to the schools to the East of us on a Monday and to the West of us on a Tuesday.

Thirty Nishtha staff, single women, stitching ladies, one guest and a driver all set off up the mountain to Billing, where we stopped for lunch watching the paragliders. Over the top of the pass we spent the night in a guest house in Rajgunder where we enjoyed dancing, relaxing, feasting and hiking in the clear mountain air before heading home. What a restorative, happy adventure.

Ravindra taking the opportunity to interact with and read to the children in the upper schools while she refreshes the Nishtha book box libraries.

The children were thrilled by a brief but memorable visit by an Italian clown called Paolo who spent and afternoon teaching us how to juggle!

We held a party in celebration of 3 of our longest serving staff members, Suresh and Azad from the clinic and Partapo from Dr. Barbara’s house. As a gift they received a handsome wooden chair with comfortable cushions on which to enjoy their retirement. However, Suresh and Azad are keen to continue working with us on contract so we are saying goodbye!

We held the second of our series of one day follow up workshops for the girls who received adolescent training last year. The purpose of bringing the same groups back to the community centre is to review the topics covered in the previous workshop that this group of girls participated in last year. Most of the girls remembered quite a lot of what had been taught about nutrition, women’s health issues, first aid, career objectives and phone usage and followed up with plenty of questions. Quite by chance, we received an unusual visitor, Brij, a retired banker from Kerala who is riding his motorbike around India for 800 days, stopping off to meet people and present his aims of women’s empowerment and national literacy. He gave a very interesting and stimulating talk about the importance of questioning everything, not to take things we learn for granted and never to be afraid of asking questions. He asked the girls what was their ambition and encouraged them to constantly talk about their aim in order to make it a reality. The girls found him to be a very interesting personality and very much enjoyed meeting him. Thank you Brij for dropping on this particular day!