In Himachal Pradesh the last camps of the nationwide Summer Camp program were running. When I found out a team from Delhi was going to Himachal Pradesh to assess the Summer Camps I decided to join them and see what had been happening in this part of the country. Walking in Himachal Pradesh feels like taking a stroll through a Hindi movie love scene. There were flowers everywhere, and trees heavy with fruit were rustling overhead. The humidity was low and it wasn’t too hot – a blessing after the stifling Delhi weather – and when the clouds came in they wrapped the mountainside in a thin layer of mist and it would drizzle lightly. The mountains rose steeply behind us, but a wide fertile valley opened in front, speckled with paddy fields and winding rivers. Two block coordinators Anuradha and Sangeeta were accompanying us and together we made a merry team, chatting and laughing as we walked.

On the road to one of the camps we paused for a lunch of Sangeeta’s home grown mangos. They were small and yellowish on the inside – but so sweet! Juice ran down our face and hands as we slurped the delicious mango. We were visiting a village built on a tongue of land between two rivers that flood during the monsoon months, making the village inaccessible. We sat eating our mangos on the ridge of the riverbank, overlooking a valley that looked as though it had been untouched for hundreds of years. The village was very picturesque; the buildings were painted in rustic shades of indigo and green and in the cool shade of the verandah were wicker baskets for grain storage. Majestic roosters strutted in the lanes and lines of colorful washing were strung between the trees.

The school was set slightly apart from the rest of the village, standing alone on a small raised area. One room of the school had been opened for the summer camp, and inside we found thirty little faces sitting in their ability groups. Four young volunteers were waiting expectantly for us. It was dark inside the classroom, and I noticed a heap of rubble in one corner. One of the volunteers was newly married, still wearing her bangles and with henna on her hands. She was a little nervous, showing us how she had been using the summer camp material and calling the children up to recite songs and poems for us. There was a wide range of ages and abilities in the classroom. I tested some of the children in the ‘nothing’ group – children who had started the summer camp unable to recognize letters and numbers – and noted that they were all able to read alphabets in Hindi and calculate simple addition and subtraction, although some of the children were so shy that their answers were hardly audible. Some of the older children enjoyed playing with the currency Pratham had prepared for the summer camp. Using notes of 1, 10, 100 and 1000 the children were able to play games while practicing their mental arithmetic skills.

After visiting the school, we went to the home of one of the volunteers for tea. The summer camps had clearly been received well in this village – children had maintained or improved on their learning levels, and the volunteers told us about a rally that they held with the children to cement community support and enthusiasm. Anuradha and Sangeeta had taken the camp children on a picnic – an enormous treat for the children and their families. As we sat and chatted, a few curious children were peeping out of the windows and the sides of the buidings. It started to rain. We all sat around together, sipping our tea and watching the rain.


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