Following our experience in Thazhanguda and our will to give to the population of south Indian’s villages the means to improve their educational situation, we plan to develop a new educational project in a new village (not yet identified), based on the active participation of the population. The aim is to implement educational activities for all, which will be handled by the community. During the entire project we will intervene only to impulse dynamism and to provide technical support.

In order to finish the school year 2008, the Solidarity Club of the Charny school organised a little party end of june. A professional story teller was invited to recount indian legends and the Club students cooked some indian style cake for the party. Isabelle, the teacher in charge of the club, and the students also presented to their guests all the activities they have done throughout the year.

Under the impulse of Maud, one of our most active member in Brussels, a Disco Party went on all night long beginning of June. Several hundreds of Euros were raised which will allow us to develop new activities in Thazhanguda. Party on!

During the first week of March, two clowns (Steve and Gauthier) from the organization “Clowns without Borders” (www.cmsf.be) visited Thazhanguda village to perform a clown show for the children. It was lot of fun and happiness all around. The clown show insisted on the global warming by performing a play with polythene paper dolls. During the show, children and parents not only enjoyed but also learned about the effects of global warming. We hope we will be able to renew such partnership in future. Thanks a lot to “Clown without Borders”!

End of february, the new Solidarity Club of the Charny High School (south east of Paris) has celebrated its opening with an exhibition about India, in the presence of the Charny local authorities. The Club has been created in order to support and exchange with the Thazhanguda Kid Center.

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Following our exhibition in the Sainte Marie's library, the village Mayor asked us to present our organisation in his New Year Whishes' party. Our dear secretary then hold a stand during the full evening. The 2008 year is starting well!

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As you can see on the enclosed picture, the construction of the new Kid Center is going on well. Our team started to put the roof. As soon as this will be done, they'll be able to start to lay out the inside of the building. We hope to be able to finish the construction within two months.
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End of 2007 was very busy for IDES teams! We organised the 7th of December an "Indian Party" in Brussels in order to raise funds for our projects in India. We also inaugurated the 14th of december an exhibition in the Island of Ré which displayed the works of french and indian children who correspond since mid 2006.
All details on the "events" page!

In order to improve the skills and knowldege of our pedagogical team, two trainers, Myriam and Jocelyn, from our French partner the Ceméa have come in Thazhanguda during three weeks in October. After a first week of dialogue and exchange with our team of teachers and coordinators, Jocelyn have provided a ten days training (for the full Nangal team, as well as teachers and animators from four other partner NGOs) aiming at providing the fundamentals of children knowledge, group and conflict management, usage of space… More info!

With the help of Delphine, a lawyer who especially have come from Brussels to work on this, we organised workshops with Thazhanguda children and our team of teacher on child right issues.
More info!

Saturday 11 August 2007 was a very special day for Nangal: a picture exhibition, buffet and party were organized in Le Toucan restaurant, in order to collect money and to promote our activities. It was a great success: we collected nearly one month of running costs for the projects and people had fun until early morning. It would have been impossible to do this without Le Toucan’s support, a precious partner which also sponsors Thazhanguda children’s school equipment.
Click here to get the full details!>

These 3D plans of the future new education center can give you an idea of what it will be like (front view and back view). Go and have a look also on the "ProjectInProject" page to get more details about the construction concept, planning, and awareness activities that we will organise in the next coming months with our partner "Architecture & Development" on habitat and environmental issues.

Five paintings were presented this 17th of July during the auction sale organized exclusively for Nangal in Casablanca (a department store of Pondicherry), by Sandrine Mathieu (High Design), a fervent supporter of our activities. The Hindu journalist and photographers were there to cover this event. All the paintings were sold and the money collected was fully donated to the Nangal project. This event was also a nice occasion to communicate about our activities.

In order to start the construction of our education center in Thazhanguda, we asked a "Poojari" (hindu priest) to bless the building start. Coconut, spice, lemon, pumpkin, kunkum (red powder) and other things were prepared for the event. A hole was dig and we put in the first bricks previously blessed by the Poojari, decorated with red and yellow colours, flowers and coins. Finally, all the food used for this ceremony was shared between all spectators.
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The summer camp is now finished and it is time for the children to go back to school. Before that, they wished to present the personal shows they have been preparing on their own during the camp. The children dressed and maked up for the occasion. The whole Nangal team, as well as the children's friends and some relatives came to encourage them and enjoy this joyful moment all together.

Since the beginning of may, Thazhanguda children and  teenagers meet every morning with Nangal animators and participate to multiple funny and pedagogical activities : theater improvisation, cooperative games, collage and paper masks creation, treasure hunt, media workshop... Summer camp is also a good opportunity for us to precise the pedagogical program of the coming year.
More info about the summer camp

The French ministry of foreign affairs organise every year one day of exhibition where NGOs working in the international solidarity field can present their action and meet other solidarity actors. IDES among other organisations had one stand during this event.

We are especially careful about the quality of the teaching provided to Thazhanguda's children. We invited a consultant last week in order to help us to assess our teaching strengths and weaknesses. Following this visit, we decided to organise every two months a full day meeting with all our team in order to discuss about our projects and find solutions to their main issues.

In order to encourage and reward two groups of children (Bridge Class and 10th standards) who have passed difficult examinations this year, we organised a four days trip to Kodaikanal mountains. The children discovered an environment totally new to them and fully enjoyed the trip!

More pictures in the Gallery!

We invited mid July the parents of the students who attend our classes and activities to come and meet our team of teachers and express themselves about our projects. We got very interesting feedback from these parents and we decided to organize this kind of meeting more regularly in order to keep in touch with Thazhanguda's people needs. It will also allow us to involve the parents in our projects.

The 2006 Summer Camp is now finished. Several groups of children worked on different workshops, producing a newspaper, a clay village, awareness posters, a theater screen... Others attended theater and dancing classes. Beginning of July, we organised an exhibition and a show where the children displayed their work and skills...
More pictures in the Gallery!

After 4 month of hardworking, the 15 children who have joined our Bridge Class program (relevelling classes for the children who have dropped out from school and want to go back to school) have passed successfully their exams. They can relax for a short while before joining back school in June.
See the "Projects" section for more details

Since march 2006, we have developped a cultural exchange between Thazhanguda's children and two class of french children of a higher secondary school in the Ile de Ré. Among other workshops Thazhanguda's children have designed their portrait using all waste material they could find in the village. The portrait have been then sent to France.
             Click to see three more portraits >

The 14th of February, we invited three street theater companies to come to Thazhanguda and perform a show in the village. They first hanged around the village dressed-up as huge colorfull mamas and other crazy caracters. Then they performed an hour show which finished with everybody's "dancing" on the scene and around! 
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The 15th of August is the Indian Independance day. Children get one day off and we organised during this long WE a three days' sport competition with about 300 children (!). Each team had to find a name, slogan and design their own sign before competing against the other teams the following day.    
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In Tamil Nadu, summer holidays happen in May, the hottest month of the year. We can develop during this month ambitious pedagogical projects.  This summer, we organised, aside leisure activities, painting and theater workshops. The children prepared a show that has been performed middle of June in front of the whole village.
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Thazhanguda's  Kid Center was inaugurated in march 2005. The local authorities gave us the permission to use Thazhanguda's community hall that we have restored and equiped to run our program. The first project we have launched is after school tuition for children from 5 to 15 years old.
See the "Projects" section for more details