Hello friends – Greetings from Seem with another newsletter detailing a lot of activities, visitors, workshops and of course, the much awaited, annual day function. So, without wasting too much time, here goes:

but first, the good news!!

Full credit to Vijay who has been coaching the senior students at the library since 2019.  

Gaurav, Akansha, Mahi (then & now)

Agnipath Training Programme- Another piece of good news is that 4 out of the 5 boys’ cohort from the library cleared the written examination. They had been coached by Vijay and trained on the examination processes at the library through online practice tests in collaboration with a Haldwani based institute. These boys are now undergoing a month’s intensive physical training at an academy in Haldwani, to prepare them for the recruitment rally scheduled in July.

College admissions-

Mahi & Akanksha, the two graduating girls, have secured admissions to the BA (Hons) programme at Banasthali Vidyapith, an all-women’s university in Tonk, Rajasthan and are scheduled to join the course in July.  While the library is providing the bulk of the funds as scholarship, it is heartening to note that their families are chipping in with some funds, that too for an education for a girl-child so far from home.  

Gaurav has been selected for BSc (Hons) in Mathematics at the Shiv Nader Institute of Eminence, Greater Noida. He now awaits award of fee waivers so that he can join the university, with the required the balance funds being arranged by his family and HCL.

Our Sponsors – We are humbled by the spontaneous support from a number of our friends and well-wishers who have committed funds for these scholarships for the full duration of 4 years. We have now created a fund for such contributions so that we can continue to sponsor other children in the coming years while continuing with the funding for the day-to-day operations.

Activities during the quarter

Tuitions & Library sessions – due to the summer holidays in the plains, the attendees at the library have increased with the cousins and visiting relatives coming for the summer vacations.  We now have more than 100 children coming daily, some of them from villages almost 5 km away. Some of the visiting children want to stay back in Seem so that they can attend the library and participate in all the events on a regular basis!

Taekwondo Belt Examination – a ‘Colour belt promotion test’ was arranged for the children who have been learning taekwondo for more than one year. On 14 April, Mr Kamal Kumar Bisht, a Dan 4 Blackbelt and a national taekwondo referee who also runs a martial arts academy in Almora took the tests.

Of the 16 children who took the test, 6 qualified for the green belt and 8 were awarded the yellow belt. The children were given certificates from the Taekwondo Association of Uttarakhand, which will be valid throughout the country for furthering their taekwondo training.

Sparring rounds were also held for different age and weight groups and gold & silver medals were awarded.

The expert was very impressed by the skills on display and gave the children some tips to further their talent.

Devashish with the children

Tilak- an old friend and dance teacher from Ahmedabad came for almost a month in May. He taught 4 groups of children of all ages, classical and folk dance. The kids learned dance exercises & techniques, shlokas, gestures, moods & expressions associated with dance. Some of these pieces were perfected and performed during the annual day function in June.

Tilak was very happy with the kids’ keenness to learn and we are sure that a visit to Seem each year will become a regular feature in his calendar.

We were also able to test the use of tablets and television for online classes to be taken by Tilak whenever we can schedule them in the future.

Tilak teaches dance

Visitors – This quarter also saw many visitors coming to the library.Veena, taught the children songs in Kannada. Karunya, read out from her recently published children’s storybook, “There is nothing there” and did activities round the book, while Rohan interacted with the children and introduced them to some fun games he had developed on his computer.

         Karunya & Rohan

Haru Mahara & team (11 May) –Haru, a recent acquaintance, with roots in Uttarakhand is based in France. He works with the Indian diaspora there and organizes exchange programmes for youth in India & France. He had a wonderful and spontaneous interaction with the kids who were most impressed by his energy &his accented kumaoni !He has assured to visit again and arrange for some programmes with his friends in France in 2025.

Haru with the children

APS, Ayodhya (26 May)- a visit by 65 students from Army Public School, Ayodhya, caught us all by surprise.  They were on an outing and decided to visit the library.  Fortunately, the library was in session so it turned out to be a good interaction with our children and them.

Rangail  – is a small village about 40 km away. In the past we had helped set up a small initiative by giving some books and board games. The organizers there wanted to bring their children on an exposure visit to HCL.  So, on 19 & 27 May, 2 groups of 13-14 children and chaperones visited the library and interacted with our kids.  They had a good time and went back with happy memories.

Library Outreach at Devidhura School –In the past we have been helping this school in a remote area of Uttarakhand, with linkages to Angelic Foundaton for setting up their school library. This year, with a generous donation from a well-wisher, we could arrange for blackboards for 10 classes, teaching materials and a speaker system as per their requirements.

Annual Day (8^th June) – The much-awaited Annual day function was scheduled for 8^th June this year. The children had worked very hard for the past two months preparing for this day with various dances and plays. Nidhi continued with the Bharatnatyam pieces, a form of dance that the children have mastered while Tilak added the folk dances (bhangra, ghumar and garba) and two pieces for the toddlers. Three plays & skits under the guidance of Jayesh were also performed.

Clearwater Analytics sponsored laptops for the 3 graduating students from HCL. These laptops and prizes for meritorious performance in the annual exams were handed over to the children at the end of the function. 

Over the years we find that the children have developed good theatrical and dance skills and the younger ones who join the library each year are learning even faster. The confidence level of the children has improved drastically and they don’t hesitate one bit to perform on stage in front of a large audience.

Almost 200 – 225 community members and guests attended the function and wholeheartedly cheered the children.The programme concluded with a vote of thanks and distribution of sweets and snacks to the visitors and children.

Annual Day

Sports day – Clearwater Analytics continued their previous year’s initiative of sponsoring the annual sports in continuation with the annual day.

Junior sports – were organized on 8th June after the conclusion of the annual function.  Children of class 4 and below participated in a lemon race & hoola-hoop competition while those of class 5 & 6 took part in a relay race and kho-kho game. There was great competition among all the toddlers with a lot of cheering from the assembled visitors and volunteers.

Medals and trophies were awarded to all the winners and runners-up.

The session ended with the distribution of goodie bags and stationery packs, sponsored by CWA, for all the children.

Junior Sports

Senior sports – These were held on 9th June forenoon. The day started with a limited over cricket match among 4 teams followed by a final match. It was mandatory for both girls and boys had to bat and bowl.  This was followed by a relay race amongst 8 teams with 4 teams qualifying for the finals.  The games concluded with a tug-of-war competition between girls and boys – the girls winning again this year due to their sheer number!! 

Trophies and medals were presented to the winners and runners-up and trophies were awarded for outstanding performance to both girls and boys. The winning teams were given the rolling cups that are retained at the library. Stationery packs sponsored by CWA were handed over to the children following which a hearty lunch was enjoyed by all the participants, visitors and volunteers.

Senior Sports

Art workshop – Samarth has been conducting a ‘Comics and Arts Workshop’ since February of this year, with 16 children. The workshop is a space where the process of working on comics and visual narratives compels us to learn new mediums, new ways to draw and represent and an opportunity to look at our own lives more closely, to find inspiration through storytelling. The children have worked on some fantastic little projects, their own learning curve being made very visible in these works. After the first 4 months they have produced a book called ‘Comic Karname’, a compilation of comics they made during this period.

In Samarth’s words – “I was motivated to facilitate this workshop by a curiosity regarding my own practice of sequential art and how it can find relevance in the contexts that we inhabit here, in Kumaon. Having lived here for 3 years, i noticed that comics were largely absent from the ecosystem around me and so was that ecosystem missing in comics. This workshop is also an experiment—i intend to introduce comics and art as a means of perceiving and making sense of the world, encouraging them to think visually, observe closely and in the process of storytelling, create bridges to find compassion. More importantly, many of the explorations i encourage the children to make are also explorations that i am engaging with at my desk. The workshop, in this manner, ends up being a space of companionship and community for me and hopefully, for all the participants involved.”

Samarth was recently awarded the ‘Leela Mukherjee Artist-Educator Grant’, an annual grant instituted by the Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation, to support this work for a period of 1 year. Through this grant, he will be able to buy the material for the various activities, books and comics. We will eagerly share the progress of this initiative with you all in the coming newsletters.

Art based workshop

Coding workshop (13 – 20^th June) – Sriram, a former prof of computer science from IIT Bombay, had visited us in March and decided to do a coding workshop for the children at the earliest opportunity. With assistance from Devashish, he used the Scratch programming environment to teach 27 children in two groups (12 from Class 9-12 and 15 from class 6-8, along with Vijay, the math & science tutor). The children wrote code to showcase their own (software) pianos, clocks with creative bespoke faces, geometrical patterns, funny multimedia skits, physics concepts such as balls falling due to gravity and bouncing off edges, and games based on these learnings. The children took to these lessons immediately; not only were they reluctant to take a break in each 2 hour+ session, they learnt the concepts faster than expected, which forced Sriram to forego his morning walks and prepare for the day from 4 AM on most days!

Here is a sampling of the projects: https://scratch.mit.edu/search/projects?q=sriram_malhar

This workshop was a part of a series of workshops conducted by the Learn Through Stories project (http://learnthroughstories.org), or LeTS for short, where the aim is to learn how to learn, and how to be creative. Just as the coding workshop used the computer as a medium of creative expression, other upcoming workshops will use tools such as theatre, sketching and bookmaking to help kids learn how to be creative and how to express that creativity.

We are also hoping to be able to continue this programme online which Sriram can conduct remotely.  

Coding workshop

Linde CSR Sponsorship – The Linde Foundation had supported us with 15 Lenovo tablets last year. Besides being extensively used for the coding and theatre & dance initiatives, these have been well used by children of all age groups.  Using online applications, the toddlers learn educational concepts, the middle schoolers learn english through reading and conversation apps and the seniors do their studies online.   

Majhkhali Children’s Mela – is an initiative by Prachi and her volunteers, who organise fun fairs for children of their surrounding villages.  This year they decided to brg the mela to HCL, Seem and rock it!   About 75-80 kids attended and had a blast with mirror maze games, jumping jack, hoola hoop, fun & robotic games. This was followed by a puppet show in the library.

Food stalls for paani-puri, moori, momos and chowmein were set up by volunteers Rohini & Tautik and Chef Deepak. Children used their pocket money to purchase coupons which were traded at the food outlets.  The kids enjoyed and ate to their hearts content – emptying all the stalls before the volunteers could even taste the items. Overall, a very enjoyable and well spent day!

Prachi and her group with the games

Food -food- food!!

Vocational Training Group – Khiliburansh the self-help group set up their workshop & outlet in a rented premises in Byasi village from the beginning of the year. Thus, the women have now become more independent and their store has more visibility since it is on the main route to some surrounding resorts.  The trust now has no liability towards them and we hope they will be able to grow this venture manifold. 

The link to their latest catalogue is https://issuu.com/khili_buransh/docs/kb_final

Uttaranchal Deep –a social media platform that puts up positive stories about various initiatives in the hills covered HCL in Feb/March. Their two-part video and teasers on you tube can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VlDmn3Wc1IA ; https://youtu.be/qokWRwTYLsY and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfBihVQraWo

Goodbye then & we hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter as much as we had producing it.