Mountain Children

The Society for Integrated Development of Himalayas (SIDH) is based in Bodhigram, Kempty, 12 km. form Mussoorie in the Central Himalayas Since 1989, the journey at SIDH has been about negotiating spaces through education, for a more meaningful exploration and dialogue, not only in social and political spheres, but also within individual mindsets.
Education does not exist in a vacuum. It is situated in a social, political, economic and cultural context. Education influences and is influenced by the
larger context in which it is located. SIDH has realised that unless the links of education with the larger context are explored and changes effected
there in, no fundamental change can be brought about in education
Starting with primary education, SIDH ventured into other areas of education by opening pre-primary schools, an elementary school and a high
school. Instead of expanding by opening more schools of the same type, it decided to explore other segments of education like establishing a unique
one year residential course, organising several 7-10 day short courses for young people, equipping young men to become teachers, conducting
research studies and holding seminars, workshops, publishing books and journals as part of its effort in advocacy to challenge the assumptions behind
mainstream education and create an awareness about individual perceptions. Local youth are teachers in SIDH's schools. The primary schools are
now managed by the local Village Education Committee. Each school has its own corpus fund, which makes them largely self-sustaining. Many young
people inspired by the youth courses have taken their own initiative to open schools in their villages, setting up income generating units and taking an active role in resolving local issues instead of migrating to cities. SIDH has done pioneering work in developing innovative teaching learning material in particular handbooks for teachers to help them teach various subjects by the making the local - physical and social - environment as the medium of transferring the knowledge.