Summary of work carried out from 1 June to 8 June 2014

NER Group, Spain with the help of EDI, India, organized a social service camp in Kalimpong in June

2014. Volunteers from Ekin India and Glenn Family Foundation, a Kalimpong based NGO participated in this project. NER Group through EDI (Educational Development Initiatives) sponsored many educational items for eight schools in Kalimpong. All these schools have students from very humble background and the infrastructure and facilities are also very poor. NER group through EDI gave a number of Desks and benches, books, teaching learning material, water filters, computers, library furniture and solar lights to these schools who otherwise can’t afford all this. Some of these schools have students coming from very far off places. They have to travel for two and a half- three hours to reach the school and another three to go back. The plight of the local people and their hardships really moved the volunteers. Life in these villages is very hard yet the people want to continue their study.

In Reon Dabling Primary School, one of the schools where these gifts were given, the school wall had crumbled down due to rainfall just a night before we (the Ekin and GFF volunteers) visited there. The school doesn’t have funds to get it repaired and it has become very dangerous for the students. But the students were very enthusiastic to study. One of the schools, St. Thomas Primary School, is situated in Longshyel, the most remote area of Kalimpong Sub-division. This area hardly has any connectivity with the main land. There are no roads constructed in this area. In fact we were extremely surprised to know that even today this area doesn’t have any electricity supply leave aside mobile network. No wonder the whole village had gathered in the school to see the installation of the solar lights the NER group had given them. We can’t even imagine what the value of those solar lights is for the people there and how grateful the people are.

The students as well as the teachers everywhere were overjoyed on receiving the generous gifts. They extended a very warm welcome to the volunteers and honoured them with their traditional scarves called “Khada” in their local language. The students in the various schools presented an excellent cultural programme. The volunteers from Ekin India also performed some skits and dances for the children and local people. The Ekin volunteers had camped on the grounds of S.S.S. Reon Primary School.

NER and EDI arranged full floor repairs of the S.S.S. Reon Primary School which was earlier in a very bad shape. All the classes were run in a single room. NER and EDI got wooden partitions made to separate all the classes. Ekin and GFF volunteers painted the whole school. Mr. B.T. Lepcha, one of the founders of the Reon SSS Primary School, S.S.S. Memorial Junior High School and St. Thomas School, recently visited the GFF Office in Kalimpong. According to him the children are very happy to receive the new desk and benches, to see the electric lights which they ahd never seen before, the wonderful books and specially the new

floor, the new beautiful  colour of the school building and the partition which has made them study properly without getting distracted by other classes.

NER and EDI also organized a medical camp for the people living in the remote areas of Kalimpong. All the arrangements were made by the GFF volunteers. The EKIN volunteers helped in conducting the medical camp. There were four doctors and two pathologists from Kalimpong who had volunteered to come to this camp and did free medical check-up. For people living in such remote areas, getting medical check-up done is not at all easy. They have to travel very far and spend a lot of money. Besides medical check-up, blood grouping of 200 people was done by Adarsh Nursing Home Pathological Department. This was very important as people didn’t know their blood groups and in case of an emergency where blood was required more than 10 people used to travel to hospital which are very far as they didn’t know whose blood will match with blood of the patient.

This meant a lot of expenditure of these poor people. But now since everyone has been given his or her blood group card, their expenditure on travelling unnecessarily to hospitals to give blood for a different blood group, will be avoided. De-worming was also done for about 200 children. After the medical camp the local people thanked the volunteers and honoured them with “Khada”. They also presented a cultural programme.

The project ended on 8^th June 2014 and all of us from EKIN left Kalimpong carrying with us the wonderful memories of the tour which we will cherish throughout our lives. We are really grateful to NER, EKIN, EDI and GFF for giving us a chance to be a part of this programme. The people who have been benefitted by this project really needed this support and we are glad we could do something for them. It is very hard to imagine and even harder to express how grateful the people of

the various villages of Kalimpong are. For us it has been a really overwhelming experience.  We are usually so engrossed in our lives that we fail to notice the sufferings of the people around us. This tour has really been a thought- provoking experience which has given us a new insight and made us think for the uplift of the underprivileged sections of our society. We hope NER group will give us an opportunity in future too to serve this world in whatever humble way we can.