One of the greatest resources we have is a large library of childrens books in our main buildings living room. Unlike so many others around India our children can borrow and read books at their leisure. Many of our volunteers get involved in reading times with the children and as a result the living room is more often than not filled with children of all ages. Some of our children are such heavy readers that they have actually finished nearly every single book in our library (nearly 1000 books).

We just received a large donation of great books from some friends who live nearby in a town called Nanital. The children were very excited to have these new books and we wanted to take a moment to express our gratitude to our friends for their support!

One of our local farmers and a very old friend of the mission came by with a load of sugarcane for the children. In the past the kids have had sugar can many times but never in such abundance! For those who don’t know sugarcane (as the name suggests) is one of the main sources from which the world receives sugar. The cane itself is like a tall grass (similar to bamboo) that contains a juice inside which is rich in sugar. Chewing on the sugarcane produces this sweet juice and is the reason why our children love it so much! We are very thankful (as are the kids) to our good friends for their kind support.

Thanks to some amazing help from some friends we have finally been able to put aside those old Windows 95/98 machines and bring out children in to the new age of technology! This last week we were blessed with 10 brand new computers! This is sure to be an amazing assistance to us both in our regular schooling and childrens education as well as our Vocational Training Center.

We are working on constructing some proper benches and getting all the software/licencing sorted out so that we can begin teaching the kids. We are so excited about what this means for our children and their futures! We will be sure to post more about this in the coming weeks!

Last night was our Annual Christmas Program which is put on by the children of our school / orphanage for the members of our local community. This year the story of Christmas was told through a giant book which made up the backdrop of the set. The children had a brilliant time with it all.

We had record numbers this year, close to 1000 people. It was a great surprise and a wonderful feeling to have so many parents, friends and important members of the Banbasa, Tanakpur and Khatema communities along for the night.

More photos can be seen in our photo gallery and videos of the night can be seen in our video gallery.

Over the last month some of our children have been undertaking training in the martial art of Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu. Training nearly every night of the week they have really been working hard to improved their skills in this self-defense sport.

We had a team of Taekwondo and Karate students from Delhi and Uttar-Pradesh who were attending a competition in Nepal come and stay with us. It was a great time for our children to mix and discuss with them martial arts in India.

Our Jiu-Jitsu instructor, Neil Desai, along with several of our staff presented the students with medals and certificates that were won during their competition in Nepal. The children were also given some instruction and lessons by Mr Desai. We are hoping that by mid-2012 some of our own students will be ready to compete in a martial arts tournament that is being held here in our state.