October 2023 Newsletter




We kept the school open through the rains and took the opportunity to educate students about the GLOF disaster along the Teesta and kept four of our students from Teesta Bazar in our prayers. Our Community Coordinator, Binita Mothay kept in touch with government authorities for relief work and sent out a call for small contributions of items for the relief camps. What we witnessed the next day was an outpouring of generosity from our children and parents. 

Our teachers in the Life Skills & Facilitation group completed their final session and those in the Pedagogy and Psychosocial Behaviour Group began their course. 

Migma Girmi Sherpa, founder of Rimbick Fresh and Dekho Darjeeling and our alumnus, Sushil Chettri, founder of Ghumaun Kalimpong joined forces to deliver a 2-day workshop on entrepreneurship for our Class 10 students with special focus on agrobusiness & ecotourism. The first day was filled with their stories of challenges, rejection, perseverance and successes. Four student groups came up with creative product and business pitches based on the inputs. The next day, the students visited the Bihiwarey Haat at Kalimpong Mela Ground to see the entrepreneurial concepts come alive, talking to the sellers, patronising their businesses and shopping with Br. Gilbert Lepcha SJ for ingredients that they would be using to cook a meal for their closing session of their course on Adolescent Life skills. Narendra Tamang and his team from the local organising NGO Akash Multipurpose Service Cooperative Society, addressed our students and congratulated us for being the first school to visit the farmer’s market that started late May. 

The students had to be heard to be believed at the closing session - the growth in their communication skills, their sense of self, awareness of community and emotional maturity was evident in their deep reflections. 

Before we broke for Dasai, the Math and Science Team organised and extremely successful Math & Science Fair called SciPi. It featured students from Class 3 to 10, excitedly explaining the exhibits, performing experiments and in some encouraging participation and getting the visitors to play math and science games. The fair was informative, colourful and nothing short of magical. The power of hands on learning was on display at the end of the day where a quiz was conducted and certain students that we would consider weaker in their studies confidently answered and even took away prizes!







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