Indian and Britain – School Twinning

Two of my clients had the idea of twinning Indian schools with British schools. Hopefully it would benefit both British and Indian school children and the teachers. The clients, after a lot of searching, found a British primary school ready to be twinned and get involved. 2 weeks agao, I headed of to India for my last tour of 2011.

Went to the school in the Old Town of Sawai Madhpur. The teachers
were expecting us and quite excited about the prospect of twinning. The kids were overjoyed to see me and I did arrive armed with pens and sweets. I also noticed that the benches and tables had been bought with money collected from one of my groups.
I felt quite emotional at the school – it was so dark and basic and smelt terrible and yet the kids were clean, well presented and well behaved.
I was shown around and I took plenty of photos. The school is a Hindi medium school – this means that all lessons are in the Hindi language as opposed to English medium where all lesson are in English. English medium schools generally do not need help and have good ressources, so we picked Hindi medium school.

The children wrote a few sentences about themselves and I was to get it translated later. One of the teachers also wrote a few words.
When I get home I will send the letters and photos to my clients who will then take it all to the English primary schools and we can go on from there.
I want to twin many schools – it will benefit both. The British schools can, hopefully help the Indian schools out, when they see how basic and deprived they are. The British kids will hopefully appreciate their own schools and education more when they see the state of the Indian schools.
Well, we have got the ball rolling and I am going to make an effort to twin more schools. One of my clients on this tour is a councillor and has offered to help. Another couple have worked in education all their lives and have also offered to help. I really feel we are on the verge of making a difference.