We joined all of our villages from Zambia, India, and Nepal in honouring their accomplishments from the previous year on Johann Pestalozzi’s 277th birthday.
Reunion – Dehradun India
Shelja Thakur, our Alumni Coordinator and Senior Student Liaison Officer, organised an incredibly successful reunion for our Indian Alumni at the Village and across the city of Dehradun. She not only oversaw the three days of events and activities but also planned their accommodation and travel.
This was the first large scale reunion they had had in several years due to Covid restrictions. 56 Alumni attended the reunion held over Christmas, where they had meals together, workshops on a variety of topics. They met at the Village our current students, where they held a large party for all of the students and Alumni.
Shelja commented that she is extremely grateful to receive such impressive feedback from the Alumni and to read all of their messages:
Skill for Business entrepreneurship
At the beginning of last year we introduced for the first time in all the Villages, entrepreneurial skills classes that were given to our students in years 10, 11 and 12.
Alongside those lessons our children were given the opportunity to run a small scale handicraft/craft food business.
We felt it was important to teach our children entrepreneurship because it can contribute to the overall betterment of the local economy and society, through the creation of new opportunities, and economic growth.
Our Indian Director, Cheme Palden, invited two local entrepreneurs to visit and speak to the children about how they had developed their businesses. The children divided into 4 groups: Woody Woodpeckers; Crafty Artisans; Foodie Pies, cookery; Miraki Arts. They made proposals and funds were approved to purchase materials. They had stalls at the reunion where they were able to sell their goods – photo fames, paintings, watercolours converted to cards, sweets and local treats.
They all made a profit and most importantly, learnt a lot!
Joining in the celebrations – Zambian Independence Day
Moving across to our Zambian Village now, the children where extremely excited by their Independence Day celebrations, held on the 24th October – for the first time in 2022 the team decided to make a big deal of this day and the children loved it! They all took part in cooking their own traditional meals and being a apart of creating the festivities.
It was such a great success that the team have already decided to do it again this year!
Public Speaking & Broadcasting Talk
Our children were honoured to have such an inspirational guest speaker join them, Suwilanji Siame. He talked to them about his career and encouraged the children to join debating and public speaking clubs.
The Big Give – Nepal
Our Village in Nepal, made an incredible contribution to our Big Give campaign, involving all their contacts and connections as well as their Alumni.
UK team visit – support and shared learning
Our Nepali team chose this as a success because it was extremely useful for them to share personally their challenges and to gain advice and suggestions from the UK team. After James and Jo’s visit the team felt really invigorated and that they had a lot of new ideas for the future. The children also loved meeting new people from outside the Village!
Successful Selection Process in all three countries.
All of our Villages added the selection process as one of their successes for the year.
Zambia trialled a new area for selection, an area they had never been to previously where Pestalozzi was completely unknown. They have a team that is determined to reach any area where children are in need, and they were able to access whether the children were underprivileged. They were successful in selecting children from this area, and in total selected 32 children to join our programme.
India had a similar experience with selecting from a different area, as for the first time they selected from Rajasthan. Our Indian Village now has 26 new children, who are all really bright and who in March will be sitting their entrance exams to join a top school in Dehradun.
Nepal selected 6 children this year, four girls and two boys, who according to their Deputy Director Kieran, said: ‘All our new children are studying hard and doing brilliant work and their housemother is doing a tremendous job taking care of them and nurturing them with the Pestalozzi ethos and values, and involving them in all of our activities. Our children are all very happy to have new children join our team and family in Pakhora.’
To find out more about our selection process click here.
Congratulations to all of our overseas teams, on a fantastic year.
2023 looks to be an exciting year, with many new developments in the pipeline. These include the rollout of new skills programmes, such as coding and graphic design, adding to the entrepreneurship elements introduced in 2022. As economies continue to develop and evolve, we want to ensure our children emerge from our programmes with a rounded education and set up for their careers.
