Every year students from all three Ecolint campuses are selected to take part in the India Project and we are this year’s Nations India Team! You may have heard about us from our various fundraisers throughout the year. We are a group of six students who, with your help, raised money for the three crèches that our school funds in Kodaikanal, India. By the time we were packed and ready to leave, we had managed to raise 8,000 chf! Last April, thanks to the overwhelming support from all our donors, we travelled to India and, as promised, worked tirelessly on the many different projects there such as: the crèche murals, cookstove, and refugee house projects. This article is meant to be about sharing our experience and showing you what we’ve accomplished.
Our humanitarian trip to India was already a month ago, so we have had time to reflect on everything we have seen, everyone we have met and all the work we have completed. We are truly grateful to have been a part of this ongoing project and we hope to continue contributing to the cause.
The activities presented to us when we arrived were extremely varied ; we were given a choice between half a dozen and could sign up for the same activity all week, or pick and mix different activities. For example, one of the projects revolved around the three crèches, where we painted educational murals, refurbished the playground swings and helped take all the children to a park for lunch every day. All the crèches were also given donations from donations boxes situated in the three campuses (thank you again for your contributions).
Other projects located in nearby villages were also successful, one of which was the Samakadu tribal village project. The work in Samakadu consisted of rebuilding cookstoves and mud houses for the inhabitants. This was so that the smoke from the stoves could be evacuated through the chimneys rather than keep them inside the house where the entire family would sleep, which is especially dangerous for the children’s lungs.
We also demolished and rebuilt a thatched refugee house that had been ruined by recent natural disasters. This was also particularly successful. Two of the nations India team members worked on the thatched house on the first day when it was being taken down, and we managed to finish by lunch! There was a second rebuilding of a house that had also been damaged in the cyclone that devastated Tamil Nadu back in November 2018. Part of the money we collected went towards rice, fruit trees, and beehives for a secluded tribal village close to the town.
Our whole team is truly grateful for the experience, words cannot describe how enriching it was. We all learnt an incredible amount about the culture, the conditions, the people, and their lives, and will never forget this trip.
Once again we’d like to thank you all for the donations that enabled us to contribute and complete so many projects. We, the India Team, will forever keep in our hearts the people and places we were introduced to.
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