Reflections on HOW projects
A Time for Hope: Mussoorie, Uttar Pradesh, India
'I have found, as every teacher finds, that there is
nothing like teaching to help you learn.'
His Holiness the Dalai Lama
"It feels as though Mussoorie lies in a direct line east of here. Almost. You fly to Delhi, board the Shatabhdi Express heading straight towards the Himalaya, then six hours later you step out at the searing railhead of Dehra Dun, in Uttar Pradesh. The road up to the cooler fastness of Mussoorie gets vertiginous then, snaking through a dizzying succession of bends. At 2,000m above sea level, Mussoorie is remarkably similar in its contours to Dharamsala and the other 'unapproachable heights', the crumbling yet still magnificent hill stations built in the days of the Raj, where many of the Tibetan refugee enclaves are placed. And 'always in sight... beyond the highest thicket of pines, there shines the unimaginable mass of the mountains, the ramparts of Tibet'.
Mussoorie was the first resting place in India of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, on his flight from Chinese repression in 1959. HH's concern for the education of disadvantaged children led to a number of Tibetan boarding schools being set up in suitable hill stations across northern India. The Tibetan Homes Foundation [THF] is a major site in the constellation of Tibetan educational facilities in India, but hasn't previously seen any Hope One World involvement. THF stands in Happy Valley, on the outskirts of Mussoorie, in the Himalayan foothills.
Our work took place in the year when India's population touched 1bn. Uttar Pradesh lags behind India's average on every social indicator, including birth-rate, literacy, healthcare and the status and education of women. The Tibetan community, with its superb organisation and ability to attract support from the west stands apart in many ways from this economic, technological and demographic polarisation of Indian society.
With the financial aid, mainly of SOS, THF Mussoorie cares for a rising population of over 1500 students housed in 30 homes, spread widely and often several kilometres away from the main village. A government moratorium on building in the Mussoorie district means that the spectacular mountainside site cannot currently be developed further. It does however contain some fine homes, built in the Tibetan vernacular. The homes themselves are composed of boys and girls of different ages, most of them orphans, semi-orphans or new arrivals from Tibet. 'Great care is taken to mould these children into productive future citizens of Tibet.' They help their foster parents run the home, 'to develop initiative and a sense of responsibility in each child'.
Paul Rafferty and I gave a ten-day workshop on 'raising the achievement of children across the curriculum'. There is a report on this work available through HOW. It's enough to say here that it was very well received and was a rare occasion for all the school's teachers to come together as equals and share their vision and ideas. In-service education is very important to them in a school where they have to work against very daunting odds to make the most of the life-chances of their fine children.
There were a number of innovative aspects to this visit, including the writing of the course through e-mail, with Brenda Duncan and Hilary Turner. When the conflict in Kashmir inhibited movement in Ladakh, they were diverted to work in Rajpur, close to Mussoorie and we developed a course together. We also took more students with us. They grew to six in number, unprecedented in the history of the HOW Projects.
The students were outstanding in the work they achieved with the children in the classes, and made many friends. There were glorious expressions of appreciation on the evaluation sheets at the workshop's end, represented here by the words of Mrs Thakchoe, who said that this had been a chance to 'make learning so meaningful. The workshop will definitely make teaching more effective here, now and in the future.' In the highly charged ceremony concluding the workshops, we took the opportunity to say: Thuje che! Thank you! It had been a wonderful experience, in which all seemed to have gained. The Tibetan teachers want HOW back in Mussoorie next year. Perhaps you would contemplate going?"
Les Hankin
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