Tisa Village

Looking out over Tisa

One of the most meaningful (and most fun!) aspects of the project thus far has been interviewing youth from local villages.  

Over the past several weeks we’ve been traveling to different villages and meting with local students and parents to chat about employment and educational challenges in the region.  Last week we visited to the villages of Guani and Kolka, and then on June 9^th, we ventured into one of the most rural (and most gorgeous) regions of Himachal Pradesh—Tisa Block.

Tisa is kinda like a county, but here they use the term “block”.  Just to give you the low down, India, like the US, is divided into states. These states are then divided into Districts, districts into blocks, and blocks into panchayats. Panchayats are groups of 15 or so little villages (village can be anywhere from 10 to 300 families).  Each panchayat has a group of governing elders (one from each village) that serve as a “town counsel” for the area.

Tisa is a region in the northern part of Chamba district, about a 3 hour drive from our base in Gajnoi. Oh and the landscape is absolutely gorgeous! The deep river valley is bordered by steep descending hillsides and layered ridgelines that just seem to go on for ever and ever, until at last the snowy mountain peaks fade into the cloudy sky...what a beautiful place!

The next morning, twenty-seven youth traveled from six surrounding villages to a local mason’s spare workroom and to meet and share their experiences with us.

At first, the kids were just a little bit shy, but they loosened up pretty quickly as we went around the room and shared our names. I think they really enjoyed listening to me introduce myself in Hindi! My “meranaam Maggie hai” produced a lot of giggles.  Then we started chatting about cricket and dancing and there were smiles all around.

Jump picture with the Tisa girls! Credits to Julian for the photography.

After a while, we split the kids into groups for some more personal interaction. So Ingrid and I went with the girls, and Harshil, Julian, and Shivesh with the boys! Oh the girls were soooo sweet! We asked them about what they’d been learning in school, how they liked their classes (everyone loved studying Hindi and English…but not math, haha), and what they wanted to be when they grew up. Out of my 8 girls, 3 wanted to be doctors, 4 police officers, and one a homemaker! Unlike some of the other groups of kids we’ve talked with, these girls were just so enthusiastic to talk about their education and dream about the future.

Then we decided to take a little dance break. 

The girls insisted on teaching us some Hindi dances J.  A couple of the girls started singing and clapping, and two of them pulled us in the middle of the circle and showed us how to dance! It was so funny! Then they wanted us to show them an American dance.  So Ingrid and I thought them how to do a little Can-Can (I don’t know why that was the first dance we thought of…) and the electric slide. 

The girls were just laughing so much, we were having a great time. There was one girl who just really loved to dance, and whenever people started slowing down, she would jump in and revive the energy! But when the boys returned from playing cricket, the girls started giggling and wouldn’t dance anymore.

Then we settled down for a bit, and had the chance to talk with the girls a little more about the challenges they face in education and employment.  They talked about money, the distance to school, the poor quality of schools, their family obligations…its so sad to see girls who want so much to be educated yet have so many obstacles in their way. Yet even though they recognized that it was going to be a hard path, they still seemed optimistic and ready for the challenge. I just hope and pray that we can help them get there!!

We hope to recruit a good portion of our first batch of students from the Tissa area. You may be wondering why we want to recruit youth from such a distant, isolate place.

First of all, the schools they do have access to are not of a very good quality. A campaign was started in India to assure that every child, even remote areas like Tissa, has access to basic government-funded education (1^st – 10^th grades).  The primary goal is access, then quality. Once the infrastructure has been established, then India can begin to improve the current quality of its government schools.  In some areas, government schools are a reliable source of education, but in many areas, like Tissa, need a whole lot of work.  For example, some of the boys we talked to had graduated from high school (passed 10^th grade) yet were unable to solve the problem 2x+5=9.

Also, after the 10^th grade it is really hard for these kids to continue their education.  Upper level schools are just too far away to walk, and most families don’t have enough money to drive them there or to pay for them to rent an apartment in town.

I was really inspired by these kids and their enthusiasm for life and their eagerness to better themselves.  Our future Arpana Education Center seems to be exactly what they need to help break this cycle of poverty! So lets make it happen!