Helping Elsewhere

Clear a space in your diaries for Saturday 23rd October!!!

Helping Elsewhere are hosting an evening of murder and mystery at Alresford Station on the Watercress Line in Hampshire, combined with a wonderful meal on board a Pullman dining car pulled by one of their gleaming steam locomotives! Can you tease out the murderer as you steam between atmospheric Hampshire stations? Are you really able to match Agatha Christie’s Poirot? Or indeed Miss Marple?

The Company Upfront are working with us and the Watercress Line to create this special event for the first time, combining a nurder in the old Goods Shed with a special dining experience on board the steam train and then the final unmasking of the murderer back in Alresford.

Tickets will shortly go on sale for £85 a head – and we have heard from people that know that these tickets will go almost instantaneously.

But you loyal followers of Helping Elsewhere have an opportunity to reserve  your tickets in the next few days before they are publicly available. If you pay us now, we’ll make sure those tickets don’t get offered out again!

So root out your 1930′s finest (prizes for the best of course!), watch a few Poirots, read a few detective novels and join us for a very special evening!

Those of you who have followed us from the beginning will know that our roots lie in our Lady of Rosary School in Mandrem and this will always be a core project, supporting the teachers and children where we can.

But we are always looking at, and being told of, other grass roots projects, driven by individuals who want to be one of the grains of sands. So we will be continuing with the support for Bookworm with Elaine and Sujata as we believe they will be making a huge difference with all the literacy projects that they do. All of us know that without being able to read then the world is a closed world. So the mobile library is the first step in making hundreds of children’s world open.

Our friend, Father George, has now moved on from the major town of Margao to fertile new ground in the Western Ghats (way out in the hills, east and south towards and into Karnataka), still in the educational area but also looking at health and environment too. So with that in mind we are looking at two new projects in some of the so-called Tribal Villages. Tribal Villages? I hear you ask… well, yes, in Goa there are still villages where the buildings are made in the traditional way in mud and still some of the elders are dressed in loincloths and life is very basic with few opportunities. This is the same Goa that you see in the glossy brochures with the fab beaches and great night life. Many of these villages were founded hundreds of years ago as native Goans fled the invading Portuguese and forced conversions and they have stayed very marginalised.

Education for the kids (thru Don Bosco educational schemes) is eagerly lapped up, but if the power cuts out (as it does 40% of the time) then homework in the darkness is not an option and the families have to be persuaded that education makes sense for them. So our two projects are to be ‘Light up the Village’ which is about bringing solar power to the houses and ‘Lifeboard the Kids’ to incentivise the families to release their kids for schooling (just as in the pocket slums in Margao).

For the first, Father George and his team have come up with an ingenious solar panel/battery idea that powers LED lights and we are aiming to put one in 30 houses out of 40 (the ones with children) in the first village. There are three other similar sized villages to follow. The cost is shared with the householders and we have paid for two of these inventions so far and we want to support lots more!

Our second project is still in the same four villages and it is based around the same Lifeboard, again using it as an incentive to get the kids to attend class as it saves them a job every morning of water collection and provides clean pure water. But the kids here also have to walk a considerable distance to school and the Lifeboard also ‘powers’ the kids on their long thirsty walk (more like its origins in South Africa). Each village requires about 40 boards and it has been rolled out already in one village. We have now just passed over the funding for the second village as well. A cheap solution, but so useful!

Being monsoon period, with far less tourists to cater to, we have been lucky to be able to talk to everybody we know here for hours at a time – swapping ideas and contacts. We’re sure that this will continue to pay dividends throughout the coming year. Keep checking back!

This quote is, for us, extremely apt… we have always said that Helping Elsewhere was equally about raising awareness in others as about fund raising for our projects. So this year I have been lucky enough to speak to a class of 8 year old children in Woking, Surrey on ‘the life of the village children in Goa’ and also, at the other end of the spectrum, a class of International Baccalaureate students in Pune who attend a very privileged international school. Their talk was more inspirational in style and tone, based around ‘The Power of One’ – just because all the problems here seem so great, you should still try and you will achieve something. Helping Elsewhere is so small – only the size of one metaphorical grain of sand – but we have changed lives and if everyone brings one grain of sand we would definitely have a beach!

Moving neatly on to the lives we have changed in Mandrem… 21 students from the 10th Standard of our school have just sat their SSC exams (Standard School Certificate – sort of equivalent to GCSEs in the UK or O’Levels if you are old like us) – a very first for our school and 16 of them passed! Congratulations to all – kids and teachers – involved!

I know our blog has been woefully un-updated these last few months. A combination of work, a bit of ill health and start-stop-start-stop-start-stop attempts at house-moving meant I have not been writing anything – however the work goes on!

We are in India at the moment and I am sitting here writing this whilst the monsoon rain pours down around me. The first posts are a general ones with updates on our existing projects and it will be followed by further posts showing the directions in which we are heading – all very exciting, but more of that later…

So, in no particular order…

The library van for Bookworm has been bought and is being kitted out and sign written as we speak. When we are back in November we will have pictures to show you of the finished vehicle and more news from Sujarta and Elaine…

The Lifeboards that were ordered and made for the Don Bosco Mobile School are now out there and doing their stuff as intended. The neck design for the screw cap has even been modified so that the caps fit better, but we still need to carry out caps from the UK for them. So spare a thought for me when we return in November, as once again no shoes and pretty things can I bring in my case – just plastic lids and a football strip! This latest strip is again courtesy of Horley Town Football Club Youth Team (thanks guys!) and it will go to one of the tribal villages in the Western Ghats (the mountain strip that hugs Goa to the coast). Once the strip arrives, the school team will be able to be brought into town to play against other schools and make their mark.

Now, back in June, I had a wonderful email from a couple who we met whilst at Elsewhere during the cyclone last November and who, the last thing we had heard, were intending to get married this past spring. We listened to the plans they were making for the big day with interest as the unseasonable winds and rains flowed around us! So when, out of the blue, Owen mailed me to say they had indeed got married and had collected a donation for us at their wedding, we were mightily intrigued. They had apparently had a ‘charity beer keg’ and on the bar at the reception there was a little piece about Helping Elsewhere and every pint made us a little more! Well … all I can say is a merry time must have been had by all judging by the donation they were kind enough to send us! Thank you Owen and Livy and congratulations on your new life together!

Wedding Beer!

Well I know it is a little late, but here is the story of the Bollywood Ball!

As everyone arrived they were amazed to be greeted by our Stilt Walking Ganesha who set the the scene and created an ambiance of Good Luck. The ladies were welcomed by our Bollywood Dancers  with the traditional orange flower garlands. Reception drinks were served from our ‘Living Table’ who fitted in with the Bollywood theme perfectly in her colourful costume.

Guests were then asked to take their seats for dinner my our fabulous MC – Mark from the Short Film Company – who did a sterling job keeping the evening on track including introducing the entertainment from the Howard Productions ‘Bollywood Dancers’ who gave great entertainment value and really set the room alight.

After dinner, a short AV presentation was shown to tell everyone a little about what we do and then everyone was subjected to me giving a short talk. Everyone listened and I’m told a few people even had tears in their eyes from our video.

The Auction followed where the week at Casa Susegad was sold for £700, the meal at the Hamborough Hotel on the Isle of Wight raised £200 and the drawings of wildlife donated by Carl D’Silva raised £300! In fact all the items sold well and that, combined with the raffle, the silent auction and the Casino, raised the grand total of £3500 which will enable Bookworm to go properly on the road with their mobile library deliveries.

So, that just left enjoying ourselves!!! Jeanie Barton was just wow!!! with the guys from Jazz and Cocktails and everybody then got down to the disco or decamped to lose loads of virtual money at the casino tables.

We have lots of photos (a huge thakyou to Norman Reid for donating his time and capturing it all so beautifully) of you all arriving and seated at your tables and a gallery will soon be posted (Colin’s busy building the mini-site) and if any one wishes to buy a photo, that facility will be available soon as well.

So… What next?

Well, it will be ‘Murder at WaterCress Manor’ which will take place on the Watercress Line in deepest Hampshire. Be ready for murder at 7pm and then you can use your sleuthing capabilities to solve the murder whilst being pulled through the Hampshire countryside by a steam train and dining in a 1st Class Pullman. Agatha Christie eat your heart out! Full post with details soon…