By Katie Pollom | Director of Education
We took advantage of the Diwali Holiday by taking a 3 week trip to Kashmir and Ladakh. For a month prior to the trip, we focused on lessons of the Kashmir conflict, including film discussions, the history of pre and post-Partitioned India, and Kashmiri culture. During the trip, the girls wrote journals and we had frequent discussions about what they learned along the way. After a few days in Srinagar, we traversed the mountains in a van for 20 hours in order to reach Leh, Ladakh. From there, we took a four day trek through the mountains with the female run and led Ladakhi Women’s Travel Company (http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2011/nov/04/trek-himalayas-ladakh-india-female ). We then spent 4 days at SECMOL (Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh), a self-sustainable campus, where the Revolutionaries participated in daily chores, English classes, and also presented some gender & sexuality and sex ed workshops to the SECMOL students. The Revolutionaries are preparing a multi-media project that will include pictures and narrations of their experiences from the trip and the lessons learned in Kashmir. The theme for our project was ‘Journeys’, and the girls’ individual journeys were transformative, as was the overall Kranti journey!
During the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, four of our girls went on a 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat for teens. They practiced meditation, mindfulness, and staying silent (well, almost silent) for 10 days! Most of the girls are continuing what they learned during the retreat and making time for daily meditation, which has really helped with mental and emotional health. Additionally, Kranti has started doing ten minutes of group meditation every night before bed.
This past month, Kranti’s Revolutionaries have had an opportunity to speak at a few conferences. Shweta represented Kranti at the Urban Poverty Workshop in Mumbai and again at the ACM DEV 2013 conference in Bangalore. This month, the girls will be presenting at another conference in Mumbai as well as a class an alternative education course at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). We are fortunate to have so many speaking opportunities for the Revolutionaries and continue to seek ways to make them visible as leaders.
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