Parikrma Foundation in Bangalore, India

Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls and The Parikrma Foundation have been working together to forge closer links involving a wide range of projects. For us in the UKwe want to make our students truly global citizens with an awareness of the world around them, the challenges the world faces and to build relationships with students from different places and cultures.

Aims

Our relationship with Parikrma really started with some simple penpal letters between younger students at Parikrma and Habs. This was followed by Art Swaps where the amazing art from Parikrma was sent to us and we displayed it within our school. We have organised joint Dance competitions with the Parikrma students dancing alongside our students through the wonders of YouTube and Skype.

Background

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Resources

More recently we have held a number of joint book club sessions with girls from our school and students from Parikrma. We were lucky enough to have the author, Sita Brahmachari come to school to host a discussion on her books, Tender Earth and Artichoke Heart. These books resonated with all the students as their was an Anglo Indian aspect to them and many of our students’ families originate from India. The Skype sessions were amazing and the author found them very moving.

Impact

Our emphasis with the Parikrma link is very much about joint projects and learning from each other. The students at Parikrma have taught us so much about resilience, endeavour, the importance of learning ( and teaching) and what has become very obvious is that how similar the students from both organisations are. They have the same aims and objectives and will to succeed especially in the face of much adversity. It has been a humbling experience to be involved with such an inspirational organisation.

Pupil Involvement

Our aim , all those years ago, was to organise a swap of students and teachers and we are nearly there. For the past two years we have brought a group of students to Parikrma where we have worked jointly on Dance, Drama, Art, Writing, Design projects. These have been really inspiring and many of our girls have been moved by the experience. The highlight of the last trip was the hour we all sat and chatted to each other about our very different lives. This had a huge impact on our students. Our time with the Parikrma students has always been fun and they are always so welcoming and generous with their time. This also goes for the Parikrma staff who put themselves out to make our visits so successful.

Frequency

We are now planning for the next academic year and are hoping to host a teacher and a couple of students to come and visit us in the UK and to further strengthen our ties with Parikrma. I am working with our curriculum departments to look at working with Parikrma on joint projects in Science , Geography , English and Art. We should both be seeing each other as a resource to be used and to look at world issues such as population growth, climate change, politics ( Brexit ! Kashmir!) pollution - all of which affects us all