Since September we, Modestas (Lithuania) and Anine (Norway), have been volunteering in the Kullu Project. We both spent the last two years of our high school at the Red Cross Nordic United World College in Norway. There we engaged in various social services ranging from the Amnesty International club to table tennis classes or yoga sessions with the adjacent rehabilitation center patients. Flying to India for a 6 month volunteering program seemed like a natural continuation of our UWC education. 
At a first glance, coming to a place just a few miles away from the Himalayas was quite stunning, with its colorful rickshaws and loud atmosphere vis-à-vis the humdrum daily European routine. But after two months in Kullu we feel like home – people are the same everywhere! So far we have worked in the following institutions: Bashing and Kalyeli orphanages, NAB School for Blind, Drug de-addiction and rehabilitation center in Jiri, school for Nepali immigrants’ children in Manali and Bharat Bharti Public School in Dalphur. Living in Kullu and assimilating to the local culture brings its own challenges (especially linguistic barrier!), but let us firstly elaborate on what exactly we do on each and every institutions.
NAB School for Blind
Students here are being taught Braille and Computer lieteracy from a very young age. Elder students who’d mastered Braille reading, writing and calculations attend a regular Hindi medium school. However, it would be naïve to expect the blind children’s’ performance at school match the one of a median Kullu student. That’s where the dedicated teachers step in – after the regular classes children repeat the same syllabus in the blind school. In the end, they are putting as twice as much effort to learn the same material!
However, the young ones, aged 4-10, are just getting their feet wet with the school routine and receive little attention from the teachers. Hence we have four 3,5 hour long weekly sessions together, starting at 10 am. Also, by the end of each session we receive a pleasant bonus – free lunch!
Our activities mainly consist of teaching the basic spoken English. In the first few days we were taken aback by their linguistic abilities, the only question they were bale to respond to was “What is your name?” However, through everyday practice we taught them how to introduce themselves in a “polite British” manner. Whether visited by the sponsors or simply meeting the fellow students, they master phrases “What is your age? How old are you? Where do you live? Do you have any siblings?” Whilst some might ridicule this “lesser” knowledge, but teaching a gang of 12 children these phrases is a milestone for us and took no less than a month. Knowing these phrases comes handy when the sponsors are visiting, so that they can see that the children are really learning and sometimes surpassing the English level of the fellow students in the public schools.
You may start judging us inadvertently, but besides some “polite” phrases we engaged into music, too. To start with, we were happy to find out that the previous volunteers made simple musical instruments: empty 0,5l plastic bottles filled with rice. Visually impaired enjoyed singing the Old McDonalds, Adams family, Kangaroo Joe and other popular children songs. Similarly, songs helped us to “slow down their batteries” and regain focus for more thinking intensive learning.
Also, twice a week we’d go to a local park, just 200 meters away from the school itself. What broke our hearts where innumerable amounts of thrash: potato chips bags, cigarette packs and glassware.
Sometimes I’d start picking it up myself, and when I see a child throwing away a candy wrapping onto the floor, the poor guy’s got to be in trouble! Kullu is to beautiful a place and saving the pristine environment is doomed, without teaching some “basics” first.
Finally, each Saturday is dedicated for the crafts. So far we have made paper hats, friendship bracelets, tasted various fruits, massaged each other whilst listening to Chopin and “cooked” our own playing dough from water, salt and oil!
Trip to Solang Nallah
A week ago, we went to the Solang Nallahl ski resort (15 km from Manali), which was yet to be covered with snow, but proved no less exciting. The blind school is organizing that kind of trip only once a year. I was pleasantly by the amount of noise, dance and rhythm which dispersed in our bus. By the way, it was a generous family of Anine who donated the money for the bus. Unfortunatelly, Anine couldn’t participate in the trip due to illness.
I felt partially deaf after a two hour ride with the drums echoing in my cochleae for a few days. Afterwards, we were elevated by a thousand meters right on the skying slope. Children drunk chay and enjoyed touching the ice.
After descending, we had a free lunch with a local sponsor, but before that, our children performed singing and dancing. Finally we joined the pilgrims from all around India at the Madimba temple in Manali. Children, especially Satish and Gotam, loved pictures being taken of them.
Bharat Bharti Public School
At RCN UWC in Norway, we have been instructed how to perform the First Aid. We expected to teach the Kullu Project institutions some First Aid as well, but in reality, due to their poor English proficiency we couldn’t instruct any. However, one day we paid a visit to the Bharat Bharti school, and met a wonderful couple running a prive English medium school. They kindly invited us to give two hour-long weekly classes, on Tuesdays and Fridays 3:30 pm.
Until now we were focusing on the spoken English, as the majority of students are spending their first year at an English medium course and show little confidence speaking English, although their writing is impressive.
Each week we’d introduce them to a different topic, make a short presentation on it and a class discussion afterwards. So far we have touched the legacy behind the corporate punishments at schools and home, honor killings and marital traditions, US political system and recently – Barrack Obama’s visit to India. We were happy to see at least six 16-17 year olds who spoke fluently in our class, however the majority remained shy until a few classes ago. After all, we are working with them to build some confidence.
Besides these popular media activities we ran a few linguistic competitions, and when it comes to competition Indian students definitely stand out! After each class, some of them would insist on staying for a longer time, therefore we’d play the initiative and ball games.
Overall, Bharat Bharti not only permits us to teach the First Aid, but also gives us insights into the young peoples’ lives in India. It’s a great asset to our project. Not to mention the fact, that the management is really lenient towards volunteers and before the each session we are treated with a plate of local Indian dish.
School for Nepali immigrant children
We have only been in contact with the Mount Everest Public School in
Manali since the beginning of October. The school is for children of
poor Nepali and Tibetan immigrant workers in the region, and so
provides teaching in their native languages in addition to Hindi and
English. Since the families of the children are very poor the school
is run mainly on charity from generous local people in the
surroundings of Manali, raised with the work of a small handful of
committed Nepali and local people. However, shortage of money is a
recurring problem. Some months the teachers have had to go without
pay, and in the worst cases there has not been enough money to pay for
the petrol for the school van and the children have had to remain at
home. A good thing that has helped the money cycle go round is that
the rent for the modest classrooms has been unnaturally low due to
that the building is still under construction. The back side of the
coin is that the standards are lower, for example no electricity or
outside space to play games. However, we have still managed to play a
bit of unofficial basket ball in the lunch break in the small entrance
space outside the classroom doors. This about 2 meter wide outside
corridor is the only space the children have to play and eat their
lunch. In contrary to government schools the children have to bring
lunch from home, and every time we are visiting it is always some kids
that have no lunch and have to go hungry, which makes the aloo
parantha brought from the local street shop taste a bit less tastier.
We felt that this institution, in addition to Bashing, is one that
needs us more than any. And so we decided to do some fundraising in
addition to weekly visits. The most urgent thing they needed was a
closet to store books in, especially after a generous donation of
educational books from a school in England. In addition, the school
does not have any other teaching materials than the books, a
blackboard, chalk, and homemade posters on the walls, nor any toys for
the nursery children. So, with the money left after the simple iron
closet was bought, we agreed with the main teacher to buy a globe and
a colorful building toy.
When it comes to our visits to the school, unfortunately, the school
is 2 hours away from Kullu with bus, so we had to limit ourselves to
go there only once a week, on Wednesdays. However, we stay the whole
school day and so can get a lot done each time, and it feels that it
is worth the humpy bus ride (and sometimes hitchhike ride, which is to
recommend as it is faster and less humpy!). There are only about 20
kids in the school, the number varying each time depending on the
families sending the children, and the age range is wide, from nursery
starting at 3 years and up to 12.
We decided to focus our time with
the oldest ones, mainly due to the language barrier and that we feel
they could pick up things more easily. We would do a mix of English
exercises, - games and songs, the usual “head and shoulders”, “Old
McDonalds”, I spy, hangman, and so on, and some geography, the solar
system, and simple natural science. We would also try to break up the
teaching with some arts and crafts, drawing, friendship bands and
mehendi painting on the hands, which they would really enjoy.
Kalyeli Orphanage
Located a few kilometers from Bhuntar, Kalyeli orphanage houses 30 boys, aged 5-15 years. It is run by the government and receive additional money from the private donors. We really enjoyed speaking with the married couple who are running the orphanage, and as we found out it has a strong material base compared to the other institutions.
We got there each Monday and Thursday at 1700, and stay for at least two hours.
Children had better language proficiency compared to the Bashing orphanage, but still only the elder ones could express themselves in an understandable manner. Therefore, our initial activities consisted of language games.
Later on we were informed about a state wide skit, dance and song competition. We decided to make a skit called "Save the girl child". It is known that a high percentage of female infants are subjected to cruel death due to their gender. Also, many dismiss women as less intelligent species, who brings loss to the household when the dowry has to be paid for the husband's family. We discussed these and other issues with the boys. They promised us to love and take care of women.
So, me and Anine have written a script for the play and assigned major roles. Boys showed great interest in rehearsing for a month or so, but afterwards their interest declined. Eventually we were informed by the management to stop preparing for the skit.
Besides that, we'd engage into watching nature's documentaries. They've particularly enjoyed BBC "LIFE" with David Attenborough! Afterwards we could name the animals they saw in the documentary.
Finally, we learned how to make Chapattis , and received a generous dinner offer each time we came there. Truly interesting place, but recently we felt like loosing authority over some elder students, a problem which is yet to be solved.
Bashing Orphanage
We started out working in Bashing orphanage immediately after we got to Kullu. This is the main focus of the project and as previous volunteers have described the children don’t have much here. A positive change in the situation now has been that Sarla, the one looking after the children full time, has been joined by another girl Pushpa, a local student coming here part time. Pushpa has a bit of a stricter hand and have started to discipline the children more, but they can still be quite naughty to each other behind your back.
We would go to Bashing four times a week from 4.30 to 6.30, except for
Sundays when we would stay most of the day. On the weekdays we would
teach some simple English, as their English skills are really low. we
would start with the alphabet, do simple things as colours, bodyparts,
days, favourite fruits, foods, subjects, and conversational English,
and combine it with English games and songs much as described earlier.
We would also put in some simple geography, looking at a map even
learning north and south was new for them, and natural science, and
put in some drawing and paper plane folding with flying competition.
We would break up every session in the middle with about half an hour
of games outside on the nice spacy grass field they have available.
On Sundays we would bring a laptop and watch a cartoon movie, which
the children would really love. As we would spend most of the day at
the orphanage it would be a relaxing atmosphere, just hanging out with
the kids and Sarla and Pushpa, do games on the grass outside, or
drawing or simply listening to music and dancing inside. Also, just
bringing a camera, taking pictures and letting the children try to
take pictures is very appreciated. Sarla and Pushpa are both very
sweet and it is always a pleasure to see them, and on Sunday
afternoons when we have extra time just chat and show each other
pictures of family and friends on their phones and our laptops :)
At a first glance, coming to a place just a few miles away from the Himalayas was quite stunning, with its colorful rickshaws and loud atmosphere vis-à-vis the humdrum daily European routine. But after two months in Kullu we feel like home – people are the same everywhere! So far we have worked in the following institutions: Bashing and Kalyeli orphanages, NAB School for Blind, Drug de-addiction and rehabilitation center in Jiri, school for Nepali immigrants’ children in Manali and Bharat Bharti Public School in Dalphur. Living in Kullu and assimilating to the local culture brings its own challenges (especially linguistic barrier!), but let us firstly elaborate on what exactly we do on each and every institutions.
NAB School for Blind
Students here are being taught Braille and Computer lieteracy from a very young age. Elder students who’d mastered Braille reading, writing and calculations attend a regular Hindi medium school. However, it would be naïve to expect the blind children’s’ performance at school match the one of a median Kullu student. That’s where the dedicated teachers step in – after the regular classes children repeat the same syllabus in the blind school. In the end, they are putting as twice as much effort to learn the same material!
However, the young ones, aged 4-10, are just getting their feet wet with the school routine and receive little attention from the teachers. Hence we have four 3,5 hour long weekly sessions together, starting at 10 am. Also, by the end of each session we receive a pleasant bonus – free lunch!
Our activities mainly consist of teaching the basic spoken English. In the first few days we were taken aback by their linguistic abilities, the only question they were bale to respond to was “What is your name?” However, through everyday practice we taught them how to introduce themselves in a “polite British” manner. Whether visited by the sponsors or simply meeting the fellow students, they master phrases “What is your age? How old are you? Where do you live? Do you have any siblings?” Whilst some might ridicule this “lesser” knowledge, but teaching a gang of 12 children these phrases is a milestone for us and took no less than a month. Knowing these phrases comes handy when the sponsors are visiting, so that they can see that the children are really learning and sometimes surpassing the English level of the fellow students in the public schools.
You may start judging us inadvertently, but besides some “polite” phrases we engaged into music, too. To start with, we were happy to find out that the previous volunteers made simple musical instruments: empty 0,5l plastic bottles filled with rice. Visually impaired enjoyed singing the Old McDonalds, Adams family, Kangaroo Joe and other popular children songs. Similarly, songs helped us to “slow down their batteries” and regain focus for more thinking intensive learning.
Also, twice a week we’d go to a local park, just 200 meters away from the school itself. What broke our hearts where innumerable amounts of thrash: potato chips bags, cigarette packs and glassware.
Sometimes I’d start picking it up myself, and when I see a child throwing away a candy wrapping onto the floor, the poor guy’s got to be in trouble! Kullu is to beautiful a place and saving the pristine environment is doomed, without teaching some “basics” first.
Finally, each Saturday is dedicated for the crafts. So far we have made paper hats, friendship bracelets, tasted various fruits, massaged each other whilst listening to Chopin and “cooked” our own playing dough from water, salt and oil!
Trip to Solang Nallah
A week ago, we went to the Solang Nallahl ski resort (15 km from Manali), which was yet to be covered with snow, but proved no less exciting. The blind school is organizing that kind of trip only once a year. I was pleasantly by the amount of noise, dance and rhythm which dispersed in our bus. By the way, it was a generous family of Anine who donated the money for the bus. Unfortunatelly, Anine couldn’t participate in the trip due to illness.
I felt partially deaf after a two hour ride with the drums echoing in my cochleae for a few days. Afterwards, we were elevated by a thousand meters right on the skying slope. Children drunk chay and enjoyed touching the ice.
After descending, we had a free lunch with a local sponsor, but before that, our children performed singing and dancing. Finally we joined the pilgrims from all around India at the Madimba temple in Manali. Children, especially Satish and Gotam, loved pictures being taken of them.
Bharat Bharti Public School
At RCN UWC in Norway, we have been instructed how to perform the First Aid. We expected to teach the Kullu Project institutions some First Aid as well, but in reality, due to their poor English proficiency we couldn’t instruct any. However, one day we paid a visit to the Bharat Bharti school, and met a wonderful couple running a prive English medium school. They kindly invited us to give two hour-long weekly classes, on Tuesdays and Fridays 3:30 pm.
Until now we were focusing on the spoken English, as the majority of students are spending their first year at an English medium course and show little confidence speaking English, although their writing is impressive.
Each week we’d introduce them to a different topic, make a short presentation on it and a class discussion afterwards. So far we have touched the legacy behind the corporate punishments at schools and home, honor killings and marital traditions, US political system and recently – Barrack Obama’s visit to India. We were happy to see at least six 16-17 year olds who spoke fluently in our class, however the majority remained shy until a few classes ago. After all, we are working with them to build some confidence.
Besides these popular media activities we ran a few linguistic competitions, and when it comes to competition Indian students definitely stand out! After each class, some of them would insist on staying for a longer time, therefore we’d play the initiative and ball games.
Overall, Bharat Bharti not only permits us to teach the First Aid, but also gives us insights into the young peoples’ lives in India. It’s a great asset to our project. Not to mention the fact, that the management is really lenient towards volunteers and before the each session we are treated with a plate of local Indian dish.
School for Nepali immigrant children
We have only been in contact with the Mount Everest Public School in
Manali since the beginning of October. The school is for children of
poor Nepali and Tibetan immigrant workers in the region, and so
provides teaching in their native languages in addition to Hindi and
English. Since the families of the children are very poor the school
is run mainly on charity from generous local people in the
surroundings of Manali, raised with the work of a small handful of
committed Nepali and local people. However, shortage of money is a
recurring problem. Some months the teachers have had to go without
pay, and in the worst cases there has not been enough money to pay for
the petrol for the school van and the children have had to remain at
home. A good thing that has helped the money cycle go round is that
the rent for the modest classrooms has been unnaturally low due to
that the building is still under construction. The back side of the
coin is that the standards are lower, for example no electricity or
outside space to play games. However, we have still managed to play a
bit of unofficial basket ball in the lunch break in the small entrance
space outside the classroom doors. This about 2 meter wide outside
corridor is the only space the children have to play and eat their
lunch. In contrary to government schools the children have to bring
lunch from home, and every time we are visiting it is always some kids
that have no lunch and have to go hungry, which makes the aloo
parantha brought from the local street shop taste a bit less tastier.
We felt that this institution, in addition to Bashing, is one that
needs us more than any. And so we decided to do some fundraising in
addition to weekly visits. The most urgent thing they needed was a
closet to store books in, especially after a generous donation of
educational books from a school in England. In addition, the school
does not have any other teaching materials than the books, a
blackboard, chalk, and homemade posters on the walls, nor any toys for
the nursery children. So, with the money left after the simple iron
closet was bought, we agreed with the main teacher to buy a globe and
a colorful building toy.
When it comes to our visits to the school, unfortunately, the school
is 2 hours away from Kullu with bus, so we had to limit ourselves to
go there only once a week, on Wednesdays. However, we stay the whole
school day and so can get a lot done each time, and it feels that it
is worth the humpy bus ride (and sometimes hitchhike ride, which is to
recommend as it is faster and less humpy!). There are only about 20
kids in the school, the number varying each time depending on the
families sending the children, and the age range is wide, from nursery
starting at 3 years and up to 12.
We decided to focus our time withthe oldest ones, mainly due to the language barrier and that we feel
they could pick up things more easily. We would do a mix of English
exercises, - games and songs, the usual “head and shoulders”, “Old
McDonalds”, I spy, hangman, and so on, and some geography, the solar
system, and simple natural science. We would also try to break up the
teaching with some arts and crafts, drawing, friendship bands and
mehendi painting on the hands, which they would really enjoy.
Kalyeli Orphanage
Located a few kilometers from Bhuntar, Kalyeli orphanage houses 30 boys, aged 5-15 years. It is run by the government and receive additional money from the private donors. We really enjoyed speaking with the married couple who are running the orphanage, and as we found out it has a strong material base compared to the other institutions.
We got there each Monday and Thursday at 1700, and stay for at least two hours.
Children had better language proficiency compared to the Bashing orphanage, but still only the elder ones could express themselves in an understandable manner. Therefore, our initial activities consisted of language games.
Later on we were informed about a state wide skit, dance and song competition. We decided to make a skit called "Save the girl child". It is known that a high percentage of female infants are subjected to cruel death due to their gender. Also, many dismiss women as less intelligent species, who brings loss to the household when the dowry has to be paid for the husband's family. We discussed these and other issues with the boys. They promised us to love and take care of women.
So, me and Anine have written a script for the play and assigned major roles. Boys showed great interest in rehearsing for a month or so, but afterwards their interest declined. Eventually we were informed by the management to stop preparing for the skit.
Besides that, we'd engage into watching nature's documentaries. They've particularly enjoyed BBC "LIFE" with David Attenborough! Afterwards we could name the animals they saw in the documentary.
Finally, we learned how to make Chapattis , and received a generous dinner offer each time we came there. Truly interesting place, but recently we felt like loosing authority over some elder students, a problem which is yet to be solved.
Bashing Orphanage
We started out working in Bashing orphanage immediately after we got to Kullu. This is the main focus of the project and as previous volunteers have described the children don’t have much here. A positive change in the situation now has been that Sarla, the one looking after the children full time, has been joined by another girl Pushpa, a local student coming here part time. Pushpa has a bit of a stricter hand and have started to discipline the children more, but they can still be quite naughty to each other behind your back.
We would go to Bashing four times a week from 4.30 to 6.30, except for
Sundays when we would stay most of the day. On the weekdays we would
teach some simple English, as their English skills are really low. we
would start with the alphabet, do simple things as colours, bodyparts,
days, favourite fruits, foods, subjects, and conversational English,
and combine it with English games and songs much as described earlier.
We would also put in some simple geography, looking at a map even
learning north and south was new for them, and natural science, and
put in some drawing and paper plane folding with flying competition.
We would break up every session in the middle with about half an hour
of games outside on the nice spacy grass field they have available.
On Sundays we would bring a laptop and watch a cartoon movie, which
the children would really love. As we would spend most of the day at
the orphanage it would be a relaxing atmosphere, just hanging out with
the kids and Sarla and Pushpa, do games on the grass outside, or
drawing or simply listening to music and dancing inside. Also, just
bringing a camera, taking pictures and letting the children try to
take pictures is very appreciated. Sarla and Pushpa are both very
sweet and it is always a pleasure to see them, and on Sunday
afternoons when we have extra time just chat and show each other
pictures of family and friends on their phones and our laptops :)
Comments
realy both of you are hardworking and devoted to your volunteer work with all needy children..
good luck for your wonderful mission ... in NAB KUllu India
with well wishes
Shaan