Changing the lives of young people in Darjeeling

Our vocational training projects have gone from strength to strength in recent months. We have enrolled ten new students in the Food and Craft Institute (FCI) where they will undergo eighteen months of training, including a six month industrial placement at a prestigious hotel. We have also enrolled our first student at Lakme Beauty Academy. She will complete a six month cosmetology course, which also includes a placement. We wish all the young people the very best in their new endeavours.

Our newsest and most exciting initiative is the proposed construction of a Games Room and extra water harvesting capabilities at the children's home. During the long winter months and monsoon season the children are unable to play outside. We want to build them a room where they can play board games, table tennis and interact together.  We plan to create a space that brings joy to lives often marked by hardship. Play isn’t just fun - it’s essential for growth and wellbeing.and offers many mental health benefits. We firmly believe that every child deserves a space to play, laugh and grow.

As we move towards monsoon season in Darjeeling, one of the most pressing things was to carry out the required maintenance work on the children’s home. As can be imagined, any dwelling in the hills of the Himalayas utilised by over ninety children necessitates continuous upkeep. Out trusted contractors have worked in record time to fix plumbing issues, maintain the paintwork and install safety features, including smoke alarms.

Deciding your path in life is challenging. It’s difficult to know what opportunities are available to you and how to access them. To help our students along their path in life we hosted another careers symposium. Five local professionals from different walks of life regaled the students with their stories and described how they ended up in their chosen profession. It certainly opened the students’ eyes and showed them what was possible.

Keeping the children safe is obviously a priority for any charity. Our full-time staff have recently undergone additional safeguarding training and cascaded the information down to all who work at the children’s home. The students have attended a thought-provoking workshop run by MARG (Man Kind in Action for Rural Health) raising awareness on cyber-crime and child exploitation.

Links:

• http://www.darjeelingchildrenstrust.org.uk