Providing Education & Training to Women in India

Dear Supporters,

In short, 2017 has flown by. Overall it’s been a great year for developing our projects on the ground in Kerala, seeing us build multiple new partnerships and initiate as many as 5 new projects in the last quarter of the year alone!

In the last three months we’ve been focusing heavily on nourishing the integral pillars that support children in their education; parents, teachers and community. In October last year we began working with the teachers of a local boy’s secondary school. In total 16 teachers joined our classes, which seek to empower them to use English in their lessons more effectively and feel confident in delivering classes to their students. These lessons are short but fun with great attendance receiving excellent feedback, ultimately our objective is to improve the quality of education being delivered to students and increase the engagement and commitment of the teachers. In just three months we’ve already seen an increase in confidence and English speaking ability – plus the teachers are highly motivated and competitive, which makes for lively debates in class!

December in Kerala not only means a month of festive celebrations for Christmas but also a heavy exam period for students in both primary and secondary schools. During this time we usually pull back from our regular life-skill based classes with children to allow them to focus on their academic studies. This gives us a chance to focus on nurturing another pillar of support – their parents. In December 2017 we delivered 3 separate classes for parents that aimed to increase their awareness about how to support their children with ‘Exam Stress’. The workshops focused on areas like; ensuring good nutrition, healthy sleep cycles, the benefits of having breaks, emotional support and much more! These workshops were immensely well received by parents, many of whom gave feedback like:

 “I only ever think about getting my son to study, I never thought about how he was feeling or if he was stressed – I will change my attitude from now on and give more support to him.”

In fact, these classes got so much positive feedback that we were invited back to one school to deliver this again to over 300 parents. What an achievement for our team (and a bit nerve wracking too!)

Finally we are proud to report the completion of two new vegetable gardens at our partner who runs a home for about 52 girls, supporting them with pastoral care and facilitating their education. The school and home had two excellent spaces for growing plants and vegetables but due to lack of funding were only able to operate a small garden using grow bags which limit growth and often do not survive the monsoon season. Working with in field volunteers we were able to build two new vegetable gardens with as many as 7 beds for growing vegetables which could be used in the meals served to the staff and children.

Only 1 month after completion of this project the garden is flourishing, growing vegetables like spinach, green beans, cauliflower, aubergine, okra, chilly and tomatoes. Staff at the home are passionate about maintaining the garden and have even developed their own organic pesticides that keep the bugs at bay without compromising the quality of the vegetables and the health of the girls! Most importantly some of the girls are taking an interest in maintaining the gardens, demonstrating patience, care and commitment and learning new skills too.

As with everything we do, setting up new projects takes time, effort, commitment and patience from our team of staff and volunteers on the ground. Without the financial support we receive through GlobalGiving and The GVI Trust, it would be difficult for us to imagine growth of this nature and nearly impossible for us to make it happen. A huge thank you to all of those who supported us in 2017 – watch this space to see what 2018 has in store for us.

With Gratitude, 

GVI India