Hello friends and welcome to another edition of our newsletter! The quarter was rather quiet, due to the extended rainfall this year, but exciting events have continued nonetheless:

Activities during the quarter

Tuitions, Yoga & Taekwondo – These continued throughout the quarter but with major disruptions because of the incessant rainfall this year. More and more kids from other villages from a greater distance, are showing keenness to join in the library activities.

Taekwondo – The children attended tournaments at Betalghat for the block and Nainital for the district. Of the 16 kids who competed, 8 were selected to represent Nainital at the state level championships at Bageshwar, where they won 3 silver and 5 bronze medals. Hearty congratulations to the team and their coach Kamal.

Belt Test – About 40 children have applied for yellow, green and blue belts and they are now preparing for their belt test which is scheduled for October.

Taekwondo practice            Mango treat after training!

Shiv (12 – 17 Aug) – made his annual visit for a week this year. He worked with about 22 children in two groups from class 5 and above. Fun methods in dealing with numbers kept the children engaged in learning some basic principles and theorems.

The kids gave their feedback on the workshop and it was very heartening to see that most of them wrote they had fun and got over the fear of strange sums after the first session itself. They also invited Shiv to come over again – a very heartfelt request from budding mathematicians!

Shiv with the ‘math circle’ kids

Entrance assessment – Purkal, a well-established school in Dehradun works with children from lesser privileged homes providing them high quality education till class 12. As part of their effort, they have started ‘Navjeevan Programme’ that aims at selecting children from class 4 & 5 from remote parts of Uttarakhand and mainstreaming them into class 6 of their school after providing them remedial coaching at Purkal Youth Development Society (PYDS). They had identified HCL’s catchment area as one of their target areas for their 8^th cohort this year.  

Parents meeting – The parents were invited to the library and Jaya explained to them the concept and the selection criteria. It was necessary to make them understand that the child will go to a boarding school till Class 12 and confirm their willingness before inviting to the Purkal team. 16 guardians attended the meeting and were very keen that we go ahead.

PYDS visit (23-24 Aug) – A 7-member team of teachers and counsellors visited the library. They briefed the parents through an audio-visual presentation about what the school offers and the facilities and opportunities that would be available to the children. A lot of queries were answered and parents were also told that the selected children and parents would be invited to visit PYDS before taking a final decision on joining.

They then assessed 10 boys and 6 girls from 5 villages in academics & group activities. Two team members interacted with the parents and obtained information on the family and their circumstances. The next day the team visited the homes of all the candidates to complete their assessment survey.

Selection – at the time of publication, we are pleased to announce that 2 girls and 2 boys have been offered admission at PYDS for the 8^th cohort starting end Oct 2025. We hope the parents and children have a good experience in Dehradun and that this opportunity would be available to the children from our area in the coming years as well.

Purkal assessments & home visits

Rakshabandhan 2025 – was celebrated on 09 Aug. As always, the girls came in the morning to tie rakhis to their ‘dadda’.

Rakshabandhan

Independence Day – The celebration was organized in the library in the evening after the children returned from the school programmes. On this occasion saplings of citrus fruit were distributed among the children. They were asked to take assistance of their parents for the plantation and told that next Independence Day, there will be a competition to assess the healthiest tree and prizes would be awarded to the winners.

Independence Day

Art Workshop – Samarth continued his engagement with the junior and middle school groups. The work under the grant from the Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation is completed satisfactorily. We have now been invited to visit Delhi on 5 & 6 Nov so that the children can showcase the work done during this period.  A select group of 7 girls and 2 boys representing all the cohorts have been selected for this trip. Apart from the display of the work done, the children will get an opportunity to visit some art galleries to widen their exposure.

A new development has been the monthly children’s movie show that Samarth organizes.  

Art-based workshop & movie show

Nature Vidya – Shruti continued with her programme with the kids during the quarter. What is most heartening is that our two young teaching assistants, Rita & Anita are now able to conduct some outdoor works on this exercise independently.

Nature Vidya

Indoor games tournaments – as in the previous year’s, tournaments in carrom, chess and brainvita were organized for junior, middle and senior groups. The children participated with great enthusiasm, often developing their own set of rules to make for very good & interesting competition. Prizes to the winners will be distributed during the Deepavali party.

Action in the indoor game’s tournaments

Volunteers – Divya, who had also come last year, is at the library for 3 weeks since 28^th Sept. She works with different groups in art-based activities and is helping the children put together their art display for the Delhi visit.

Divya & her creative team

Documentary – The library hosted a 3-member team from Doordarshan to produce a documentary for their programme “Gaon se” which is telecast regularly. They shot various activities at the library and interviewed the kids & parents in the village. We shall keep you informed as and when the feature is aired.

Visitors – Monish a friend who is based in Malawi and Sanjay who is from Singapore visited the library and interacted with the children. While the former told them about Africa, Sanjay started interactions with the senior group on career development. He has promised to start such a programme in the near future.

Monish            Sanjay with the older group

That’s all we have for this quarter. Goodbye for now with good wishes for the coming festive season from all of us at HCL!