Hello from the Kullu Valley, sorry it has taken so long to update the blog. We are now five volunteers: Kristina (Norway), Aslak (Norway), Alf (Norway), Eloise (Spain) and Kitty (England). Fiona ( France) left this weekend after having spent over 5 month in the valley, and giving us an amazing amount of help settling in. We have been here almost 2 months now and are having an incredible time. Winter is truly setting in, snow has been falling on all the mountains and in Manali. We’ve been here for two exciting festivals Dusshera and Diwali.


The main focus of our time here has been at the Bashing Orphanage (previously known as the Kullu Orphanage)

Kaleyli Boys Orphanage
We visit the boys around three times a week. We began doing lots of English and games in our first few sessions and then planned a time-table involving first-aid sessions, English lessons and computing lessons. This was all interrupted though as the boys were invited to a state competition for orphanages in Shimla. They had to prepare a song, dance and five minute skit. We worked with the older boys preparing a short skit on the theme of pollution. They were fantastic and worked very hard – we taught them it in English. This involved lots of practising and costume making but it was all well worth it, them came second out of the 450 children involved for the skit and first for their dance! So they are now the proud owners of two much deserved trophies.
We began to teach them basic first aid, which due to the language barrier involved lots of shouting help! and rolling around on the floor. The boys really enjoyed it and we are all excited about starting the programme again tomorrow. The Orphanage has been given one computer and couple in charge are keen for the boys to learn computing skills and for us to type up the boy’s files into a more permanent format. So once we have completed computerising their records we will begin giving lessons in Basic computing skills.

Blind school Music lessons
Alf and Aslak have been attending the blind school on a regular basis and will be posting an update about this shortly.

Drug Rehabilitation centre
Near Kaleyli there is a Drug Rehabilitation centre which we have begun to visit on a weekly basis. This is a new initiative and we hope it will become a more permanent part of the project as the residents have very little contact with people from outside the centre. There are almost 60 men at the centre and the programme of rehabilitation provides a strict daily schedule. We have only been three or four times, where we have organised discussion based activities and games. It is challenging to work with a group this size and age range, especially as there is only one main room in the centre. But many of the men are very keen to share their stories and make us feel most welcome.

Bashing Orphanage Project

We are in the process of assisting the reconstruction of the management of the orphanage. We have taken on this project due to concern about the children’s current living situation. This is obviously a huge project and we are often left feeling useless as a change this big takes a lot of time (and work from Ankit.)
The plan for the orphanage is as follows:
• Finding a new property within Kullu for the children (they previously resided here)
• Supplying equipment and materials for the children
• Securing long term funding for monthly recurring costs
• Finding sponsorship for their education
• Employment of Staff
As for the current situation, we are searching for a property; which is tricky. Today Alf and Aslak are with a local politician who has agreed to help find a suitable residence.
The staffing situation has been greatly improved due to the re-employment of the lady that worked at the orphanage when it was situated in Kullu. The kids have a huge amount of respect for her and we have already seen a dramatic change in their behaviour. She will continue to work there when the orphanage moves to Kullu.
This morning some of the children sat the first part of the entrance exam for Bharat Bharati English-Medium School. It was an incredibly hard exam and they came out looking a little forlorn but some toffees from the principal soon cheered them up! We shall here about the result tonight, but to move from Hindi-medium to English-medium is very challenging so we are researching other schools we could send them to in Kullu. We are also attempting to find and English (and maybe also Maths) tutor, to teach the children on a regular basis.
Also, we are planning to find a doctor to do a full medical check-up on each of the children, especially now that the cold is setting in. Kristina, Fiona and Ankit made an exciting trip to Delhi for a conference about children’s mental health (Kristina will be posting an entry about this) and came back brimming with interesting information. From this we have decided to try and find a Psychiatrist to make a Psychiatric assessment on each of the children and possibly make regular visits to the orphanage.
After extensive work on Fiona and Ankit’s part we are in the process of registering the project as a small NGO. After much discussion we have decided this is necessary for two key reasons. Firstly, for the safety of the volunteers as if anything should happen (touch wood!) whilst volunteering there is no-one that would be responsible as there is no record of our work here; meaning we are on dodgy legal ground. Secondly, the Bashing orphanage project requires extensive funding to be successful. Therefore, it is important to have a legitimate bank account for donations to be received; this is not possible to set up without the project being an NGO. The registration should hopefully be completed within a week, which will mean the fundraising can begin. We would like to add that the registration of the project will not mean that any changes to the way it works occur. We have designed a webpage with a more extensive explanation about the Bashing Project and will be launching it once the bank account is set-up. We need all the support we can get so any fundraising ideas etc. would be gratefully received.

Vashist
The focus of our project has been very much in Kullu and we have only visited Manali four times. Therefore have done little work with Vashist and Mrs. Suddershana’s Orphanages. We have visited Vashist several times, doing games with the children there and being well fed by Mrs Narnada. She has been helping us with the Bashing Orphanage project by providing information about the children at Vashist’s daily schedule, menu, after-school tuition etc.


OLS – Kaleyli social service link
This was a great initiative set up by Maya, Nabila and Juliana which continued long after they left. There are now a different group of students involved in the social service group, Fiona and Anja met with the children to discuss going to Kaleyli on a weekly basis and they were all keen but it has since proved difficult to organise. The OLS children wish to go on a Saturday but the Kaleyli Boys are only available on the second Saturday of the month. We did arrange for the OLS children to come to Kaleyli on one of their holidays but only the staff member showed up due to some communication difficulties. We hope to meet with the principal to discuss this further and suggest that every second Saturday the social service students visit Kaleyli.

Bashing- Vashist trip
After hearing lots of wonderful things about the trip to Sai rupa we hope to take the children on a day trip one Sunday in December, but we have yet to decide on a destination!