Mesmerizing, memorable, exuberant, stupendous, adventurous, glorious are some of the words which can describe my ‘Ladakhi’ experience.

This July, I got an opportunity to go to Ladakh for an RSIS project and believe me, the trip was amazing. It gave a lifetime worth of memories and an experience to be treasured for eternity. Looking down from the plane at the deep and picturesque valleys, the immense and the gorgeous mountains covered with snow, was something I had never imagined in my life. It was breathtaking and you needed to be there to believe that heavenly beauty. We reached Ladakh on July 9, 2009.

Everyone was very excited about the project as well as the trek. The group comprised of 25 students and 3 teachers. We stayed in Leh for the first three days and visited some nearby monastries during this time.

On 12th July, we headed towards the Thiksay village to start our project work at the “Lamdon Model” school. There we had to build a library and an office for the school. Though hectic and tiring, the work was extremely fun. Chain-ganging the bricks, making cement, cutting the logs, cementing the walls were some of the tasks given to us. Living in the tents was not bad rather it was delightful and a new experience.

After the work, we were taken on a 5 day trek along the Indus valley. Trekking for six hours a day, at an altitude of 5000 meters and a negative temperature was something none of us anticipated. The trekking made my experience more thrilling and memorable. We reached back to Leh on July 31st. We attended the cultural night festival and the farewell dinner was pretty good too. We left for Delhi on August 2nd and unfortunately, and all too soon, it was the end of my trip. It was once in a lifetime opportunity which will be cherished throughout my life.

The DC team of Ms. Sarita Badhwar, Mr. K.K. Soni and Rajesh Santhanam, selected for the RSIS Leadership workshop at The Doon School, reached New Delhi on the 7th of July, a bit stiff and tired from the long road journey and were invited to a sumptuous dinner by Seema and her husband, our hosts for the evening. Seema and her husband were simply wonderful hosts, who made sure that we had a hearty dinner and  made arrangements for the night at a good defence guest house. Their warmth was endearing and we retired for the night and were ready for the pleasant journey to Dehra Dun the next morning. The train journey was enjoyable and it was a treat to watch the lush greenness enveloping us.

We reached Dehra Dun and were taken to the renowned campus of The Doon School. We were received warmly by Aravind Chalasani who ensurede that we were comfortable at the Foot House and took us out for lunch. By the evening of 7th July, almost all the participants representing schools like Mayo, Assam Valley, Pathways, P.P.S, Nabha, Vidya Devi Jindal and Sanskaar Valley made it. We were joined by Liz Gray and John Hamilton too. The participants had an opportunity to know each other during dinner and by breakfast, the next day, some of us were already on first name basis.
The workshop began in right earnest on the 8th of July and Liz took charge of the proceedings. She took her time to assess the audience and their background in community projects and her first Powerpoint presentations were general where she discussed about the various forms of leadership. She quoted extensively from the great leaders but one thought she had a penchant for quoting Lao Tzu, revealing an interest in the spiritual wisdom of the East.
Here is a nugget;

“The goal of many leaders is to get people to think more highly of the leader.
The goal of a great leader is to get people to think more highly of themselves.”

Liz went about her job with thoroughness, covering the vast area of leadership and its vital importance in organizing an international service project. She spoke extensively on various Action-centered leadership models and emphasized the need for transparency, openness, trust and the importance of addressing the needs of the task at hand, the teams and its individuals. The treatment and elucidation of these subtleties was breathtakingly meticulous as Liz went about her job with clinical precision. The presentation was cleverly interspersed with funny but insightful video clips to drive home a point. They broke the monotony while we relished the quirky British humour. One also observed Liz being a master of understatements.
During the afternoon session of the workshop, Liz elaborated on the issues of organizing an RSIS project and the necessity of planning prior to the start of the project and during the project. She also dwelt at length on the selection of project sites, participants, 3rd party providers, etc. Some of her statements were pithy.

To quote her 6 Ps;
“Prior Preparation and Planning Prevents Poor Performance”.
Liz also emphasised greatly on the need to wrap-up a project and elaborated on how to review the project viz. student participation, adult participation and the importance of Evaluation forms for feedback. She tirelessly expounded the relevance of writing post-project reports, collation of dairies and photos and follow-ups on students’ experiential learning. She helped us to probe deeper into the intricacies of organising a project and we were enriched by it all. It was distilled practical advice one could use. The day was truly well-spent, though demanding.
The participants were invited to Dinner by Mr. Philip Burrett, the officiating Headmaster who came off as a caring, affable gentleman and it was a pleasure to have his and Mrs. Burrett’s company in our midst. The evening was spent in the easy company of fellow participants regaling each other with risqué jokes and wild tales of the ‘supernatural’.

On Day Two of the workshop, Liz dwelt entirely on the issue of safety and how a project must be organized around the core issue of safety. Liz elaborated on Safety Standards prescribed by The British Standard Institute for organizing service projects and compared them with safety standards in other, developing and developed countries. We were stunned to know about the sheer variety and haphazardness with which various nations approach safety norms in organizing service projects. Liz recommended total compliance to UK - BS 8848 Act, which provides specification for the provision of visits, fieldwork, expeditions and adventurous activities outside the United Kingdom. She also mentioned that Appleby College, Canada has conformed to the above BS 8848 specifications.

The last theory session of the workshop was interactive and dwelt on Risk Assessment for the various activities of a service project including credentials of the project leaders, their background checks, the credentials of 3rd party providers for providing services like transport, quality of food and water, access to project site, accommodation and safety standards to be followed during the execution of the project. As Liz methodically deconstructed each activity from the safety perspective, one was dumbfounded by the number of things that could possibly go wrong during a project. The scenarios that came to one’s mind were alarming and at one point one wondered whether it was safe to organise a project at all. It surely gave me the creeps but Liz helped us to clearly delineate between acceptable risks and ‘unacceptable’ risks. One felt that risk perception was largely dependent on one’s cultural/educational/nation’s background and it would be helpful to critically examine entrenched assumptions. A big ask!

On the 3rd day, (10th July) the team of participants were taken to Fatehgram, a village about 40-minute drive from Doon. This village was first adopted by The Doon School in 2005. One was impressed to find that in a span of five years the students of Doon in association with overseas schools, including Appleby, have transformed the small settlement of nine families, with fecund capacity for procreation, from a hamlet of grass-roofed dwellings into a prosperous village where every family has a pucca house with RCC roofing. The arrangement was that the villagers will also contribute to the raising of the structure by providing labour. In association with a local NGO, HESCO, Doon has been able to provide sustainable means of livelihood to the villagers like training for fish-farming, bakery, pickles, etc. It was one splendid project. The villagers looked happy and contended and their sense of self-worth was high. One only wonders whether Daly could take inspiration from The Fatehgram project and initiate a medium-to-long term project of adopting a needy village and helping it to sustain.
The participants of the workshop had an opportunity to have hands-on experience of working as manual, unskilled labour. We helped mix and move concrete to build an RCC roof for one of the villagers’ house. The camaraderie and goodwill generated early during the workshop came in handy as the team could complete the 450 sq. Ft. roofing by the end of the day. It was a rare sight to watch adults work without bickering.

A memorable workshop indeed!

Rajesh Santhanam

The Daly-Ermitage Joint Service Project was  scheduled from February 25 to March 1,2008. The camp was supported by the Indore Diocese Social Service Society (IDSSS) L’Ermitage School, France, Pay Less Optics, Indore Old Dalians’ Association.

L’Ermitage School, lead by the mercurial Christopher Hunter and Pascal Bouquillard, who had vast experience in setting up Eye Camp projects involving secondary students in France and Mumbai. Chris brought along, the knowledge of delivering optometric services to the impoverished schools of Mumbai.

The aim of the Camp, was screening the potentially large number of patients, from slums  providing ‘free’ spectacles and delivery of correction glasses.

A group of twelve students, belonging to Year Ten, rose to the challenge and responded admirably to a crash-course in Optics, Optometric and hands-on training session in handling sophisticated optical equipments like the Auto-refractometer, Lensometer and Retinoscope. A workshop was held for the team of students in which their Physics Teacher, , demystified the basic concepts of the Eye, common eye defects and their optical corrections while, the Optometrist unravelled the principles and techniques of Optometric analysis of the Human Eye.

Armed with loads of chutzpah and derring-do, but very little in terms of real experience, the young team of DC students went about the job with commendable professionalism. The team worked out a comprehensive strategy of promoting the Eye Camp. The team scripted and designed its own flyers and pamphlets to be distributed to the residents of Shiv Nagar and adjoining slums. The coupons and forms required during the screening were also designed by them.

The most significant decision the team took which was to have a lasting impact on the entire project was employing the Awareness Broadcast Van for promoting the Five-Day Eye Camp. The students worked out an effective campaign for two days prior to the start of the camp.

We were completely taken aback by the breathtaking response and were nonplussed initially only to respond quickly to the unprecedented situation at hand. One of our teacher along with two students took charge of the registrations and ensured that the initial melee  became a steady flow of people undergoing screenings and refractions.

The response to the Camp was ‘unprecedented’ because none of the doctors and technicians at the Daly-Ermitage Eye Camp, who had also taken part in many earlier eye camps, ever witnessed the incredible response we had in the five days of the Camp.

The interest generated in the local press, gave good coverage, leading to even more crowds in the second day. In the meanwhile, word-of-mouth publicity had spread the message that the Camp was genuinely delivering on its promises, leading to more crowds. When random enquiries were made, we were surprised to discover that people from as far as twenty-five to thirty kilometres away, had walked the distance to make it to the camp. Some people had even camped outside, the previous night.

At one point of time, the crowds had become so enormous and unmanageable that we had to stop registrations mid-way, for at least two hours. The crowd was swelling, restive and threatened to pull down the flimsy cloth-tent. The situation was on the verge of reaching flashpoint when one of the Year 10 student and our in-house, expert ‘crowd manager’ got into the act and, with his earthiness, rustic witticisms and sometimes, plain intimidation, managed to bring about a semblance of order in the crowd. He also came up with the ‘brilliant’ idea of providing drinking water to the crowds which had a calming effect on their frayed nerves. Water was sprayed around the camp to actually bring the temperatures down.

The experience was exciting but disconcerting. We resolved not to take any more chances and decided to depute two uniformed guards from the Daly College Security Department, from the next day onwards.

The third day was a repeat of the previous day, the only difference being that the queues had become even longer and serpentine. Fresh from the experience of ‘crowd management’, we used ropes to good effect and the uniformed guards, with their tough demeanour, gruff voices and a firm approach, could magically restrain the boisterous crowds. The movement of the queues was also steady as the students learnt to be quicker and efficient.

The situation was, to use a cliché, “tense, but under control”.

The most remarkable part of the whole experience was that the students never felt a tinge of fear or insecurity at being subjected to such extraordinary conditions and simply went about the task at hand as if it was the most routine part of their lives.

The members of the L’Ermitage School facilitated the process admirably, taking the project to higher levels of competence and precision by bringing in more rigour to the screening process and coming up with ingenious methods of patient identification. They helped us to evolve effective classification and identification systems using relatively simple equipments. The level of bonding, cooperation and commitment to the common cause between the two teams was to be seen to be believed. The two teams, despite the cultural differences, could work seamlessly, devoid of any conflict or serious differences. In fact, the differences became indiscernible in the fervent objective to successfully complete the massive job they had undertaken.

By Day Five, the team had reached dizzying heights of excitement combined with deep satisfaction, convinced that it had made a real difference to the lives of scores of needy people.

In-charge, Social Service League

Omu cho per !!

..Oh my Gosh ! I’m still speaking Karen ! Well, very apt, since I have had one of the most wonderful experiences of my life…and I want to share these..

A key method used by Round Square to prepare students for life is by the expectation of serving others. Service projects provide students and teachers with an opportunity to participate in meaningful activities that support people around the world. Round Square students offer non-skilled manual labour as their contribution to a service project. The students and villagers work side-by-side to complete projects.

The concept of self-discovery through team-building, personal leadership, and serving a community is the key to success of the Service Projects. The purpose of this project was to install an integrated drinking water system in a Karen hill tribe community in Northern Thailand, from December 8th to December 29th, 2008. We worked inMae Chaem, in the Karen Hill Tribes region, South West of regional capital, Chiang Mai…..and what an experience it was….!

This was the first time in my life I traveled in order to do work as a volunteer. At first I was nervous as I was traveling alone. I felt anxious and lost but soon my conscience gave me confidence said “ You have to go, you have to take the challenge”. I was met at Bangkok airport by Steve Walsh, of Ballarat School, Australia the Assistant Leader along with his students Alice and Joanna. Very soon some familiar Indian faces of Akath Singh Madaan, Amit Garg, Rajat Garg, Dev vrat Patney from Mayo and Doon made their appearance. The anxiety was replaced by sense of relief and familiarity. When we reached Chiangmai we were received by Sarah and Liz.

Westarted the trip with a few days of acclimatization briefings at the Inthanon Resort, two hours from Chiang Mai. It was a picturesque location. We toured a previous water-project village (to get an idea of what we were going to achieve) and went to a market and saw local sites of interest- especially a waterfall which was like a local fall. We bought caps, sun blocks, etc. to prepare for the project.

It was then off on the long slow journey up into the mountains to our Project village. This is a village of only 70 residents, most of whom had never seen a "Westerner" let alone a team of nearly 30 of us! The girls in the team all stayed in the village school building (a very basic school with no facilities and mostly no teacher either) and all the boys stayed in a partly-constructed new village house. A rooster very upset with our arrival would wake us up on a cold morning at 4.30a.m. The villagers own houses that are very small, so sadly there was no room for us all to stay with different families.

The villagers were all extremely shy at first, keeping quite a distance and peering at us all from behind trees. However, it didn't take long at all for them to gradually come closer and closer to us all, with the children making the first move. The team members all fell in love with the village children instantly and made good friends, despite the language barrier. Naturally, the adults of the village followed suit, and by the 5th evening we had most of the village around the camp-fire singing traditional, and sometimes not so traditional songs!

The Karen people are really quite remarkable. They live hand to mouth, and have very little, yet they are a very happy and friendly people and crime is very rare within their communities. They are a matriarchal society and men and women share all the tasks, including cooking and child-care. This all makes them an extremely community-focused people, and I have never come across such kindness, humility or friendliness anywhere else in the world.

The first part of water project was the construction of a water catchment system at the source of clean water which was as far as four or five kilometres from the village. This meant building a collection dam at the source above the village, laying and burying 2000 meters of plastic pipe .Ditches were then dug and plastic pipes laid all the way back to a high point in the village where two seven and a half thousand litre reinforced storage tanks were constructed. Pipes were then laid throughout the village and taps positioned at strategic points.

The team then set up a chain and moved 4 tonnes of sand, gravel, pipes, wire, metal, rocks and concrete up the hill to the site. Very hard work in warm day-time temperatures! Working alongside our fantastic in-country team from the Pakanyor Foundation under the guidance of Jim Soutar and Richard. Jim 's inspiring talks had a rejuvenating effect on the team.

We  all set about making a large concrete slab for the new tanks to stand on, and then set about mixing lots of concrete to start with the four levels of tanks. By the time we set off for the mid-project break, two layers of the two tanks had been made.

The days were long and full of hard work - mixing cement, water and gravel to build a tank next to the cabbage fields. However, we kept our spirits high by singing and as we watched the progress the time flew by. At the end of this time, without bathing or substantial sleep, torches for light after dark, simple and completely different way of life. Evenings were relaxing cooking, chatting , singing and enjoying the campfire. Each day filled with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

The team also ran teaching sessions for the children in the afternoons, doing some English songs with them, and painting, drawing along with some games and introducing them to the childish delights of balloons, bubbles and water-pistols! The laughter still echoes in the ears. Though it was for a short while we could bring smiles on the faces of villagers which was very satisfying.

We then all set off for Mae Hong Son for a few days. Explored night markets, temples. We went for elephant rides and bamboo rafting. I think all the team members were grateful for proper beds, which were forgotten and not being woken up by village cockerels at 4 in the morning!! We all had a wonderful time there and many souvenirs were bought! The break was marred by the fact that many of the team members caught a stomach virus and fell sick. With heavy hearts we returned to the village with four members in the hospital and some in the camp.

But the show must go on. Every single had been working extremely hard, with a sense of greater responsibility justifying the lesson from the Geese who fly in V formation.  I sincerely believe that the difficulties we all had with even making it to Thailand in the first place has made us even more determined and strong community than we would otherwise have been. We had thrown ourselves into every task with great humour and within a few days were already ahead of the work schedule. We all are extremely proud of our team efforts..

We finished the tanks and the villagers gathered to see the signage and rejoiced. We all hoped that it will bring prosperity to the village. We received bags and shirts made by Karen ladies. Everyone was sad to be leaving the village.

We all come back down from the village to start our cultural tour to Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai. A Christmas Committee was. set up to celebrate Christmas. So all in all I had a great time in Thailand - both learning a lot and enjoying being able to give something to people less fortunate. Sarah ensured that we all pan down our experiences which would be a treasure to cherish.

One of the most incredible experiences of this trip was the bonds one created with the people within the group. It's hard to spend every day with some one, and then suddenly leave. The experiences on this trip created awareness of those around us, and made us realize what's actually important in our every day lives.

To succeed each individual needs not only great determination and passion, but also an understanding that this is only possible through the support of a team. It is often by moving beyond our comfort zone that we find out that there really is more in us than we think.

S. Badhwar