The terrible trio terminate their Travancore travails

Our last day has arrived and is nearly over. In a few hours we will be winging our way back to the UK.

First thing we met a number of cancer patients who are syupported by HHI. We send out a regular amount of money for this each month; if there are more needs, each person gets less money, if there are fewer needy people then they each get more. Philip does the maths for us.

We spent much of the day at Philip’s Happy Valley special needs centre, seeing just how happy the children were. Jute and Kath were very impressed with the standrd of teaching which was tailored to each child in a targetted way, with the older children engaged in a lot of purposeful vocational training that should equip them for life in the world beyond the protective walls of the centre. The government has banned single use plastic bags, so making paper bags out of old newspaper is big business these days: Happy Valley is in on the action!

We had bought some educational equipment on our trip to Trivandrum which we presented to the centre.

Then it was off to see a couple of tuition groups. State education in India is often in very large classes and is not always very good, so the tuition groups make up for these deficiencies by reinforcing the lessons learned and explaining to the children anything that they may have not understood. The result is that they have a much higher pass rate in the SSLC (Senior School Leaving Certificate). We very much enjoyed meeting the children and their teachers. Our teacher Jute was in her element!

Oh, and it is Kath’s birthday. Happy birthday, Kath! We celebrated it in great style as it was a significant one.