As a part of Karunar Kheti Trust ‘s upskilling programme (in line with its core value of sustainability), our community artisans visited this beautifully designed, engineered and crafted Bamboo Structure (by Ekarth Studio), in Amsing, Guwahati on 15th September 2024. The visit was planned and curated by our architect Uday Ranjan Goswami.

This “insightful exposure visit” to this exemplary structure is the curtain-raiser of our Upskilling Workshop Event where the artisans closely observed and learnt the various innovative and advanced bamboo construction techniques.

The next session of the workshop is stated to be held in the school campus (Selenghat Valley School) where we (the artisans and the architects) will deploy a combination of the new learnings and the traditional knowledge base to design and construct an “Entrance Canopy Structure”.

We are hopeful that all these learnings will prepare “the confident us” to co-create Shantighar (House of Peace), an essential addition to our growing school needs in the coming months. More updates on Shantighar to follow.

This workshop is being conducted in technical collaboration with Piyush Sharma (Structural Engineer and Co-Founder Ekearth Studio) and funded by our Donor Mr. Arvind Khaitan.

As a community-based rural institution, participatory processes are the fuel that drives our work and collective ethos. It is for a long time that we have dreamt of a space which can be a culmination and representation of our people-culture-design-craftmanship. Such a dream is finally coming to fruition in the form of ‘Shanti Ghar,’ which translates to a ‘House of Peace’. 

The idea of a Shanti Ghar was nurtured by our founder, Arjun and subsequently, a concept and design emerged with discussions with our architect, Uday, peppered with his own architectural vision. The construction of Shanti Ghar would be supported by Mr. A.K Khaitan, who has always trusted us with our unique and bold vision.

The concept and design was presented to our community through a series of meetings, where the community members shared their feedback on the design, further contextualizing it to our needs and reality. Around 80 members from the community participated and took co-ownership of the process. A 23-member committee was formed during the meeting, which comprises members with wide-ranging experiences from building with bamboo to RCC structures, etc. to community stakeholders such as SHG members. They have all come together to make the vision a reality by lending their skills and craftsmanship. 

We are also looking to collaborate with like-minded architects, designers, social workers, and others who would want to be part of building of such a community space. As a first step, we have presented the concept to the National Institute of Design, Jorhat. 

We would love to hear from anyone from the A-D community!   Click here for concept design presentation

Joon Ghar (Moon House) was inaugurated by Mr. Arvind Khaitan through a ceremony organized in our school on the 20th February. We dedicated this space to his mother in whose memory he donated us the money to build Joon Ghar. We the staff, children and parents of Selenghat Valley School want to express our heartfelt gratitude to Mr. Khaitan for travelling all the way from Kolkata to be with us on this special day, and for offering us this nurturing space.

This classroom has been hand-crafted by our construction crew led by Pradip da, which showcases intricate skills in bamboo work and Pradip da’s signature style, evoking a sense of familiarity with the other classrooms. In the process of building this classroom, we took our explorations in sustainable architecture a step beyond using locally sourced bamboo & our inherent craft with it, to adding:

1. Locally sourced mud (excavated a rainwater harvesting pond in our campus) to build natural mud half-walls. Pradip da, led by his experience in building mud walls and assimilating feedback from our architect-friends, Uday Ranjan Goswami and Rohan Nahar, led the building of such a mud wall.
2. Participation of our staff, teachers, and children in transporting the mud to the building location as well as helping Pradip da to build the wall.

The building of the nursery classroom is a culmination of many ideas and hands spanning our construction crew, students, teachers, management, architects and our advisor on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Mrs. Purnima Contractor, signifying our efforts with participatory processes.

We hope this classroom offers a loving space for our nursery children and they find a second home away from their parents.

We are happy to share that for this year's Solar Decathlon India (SDI) competition (more on this competition at the end of this post), we are partnering with a students' team, Team Vidhai, from School of Planning & Architecture (SPA), Vijaywada!

Team Vidhai, meaning "seed" in Tamil, is a group of seven postgraduate students pursuing their Master's at SPA Vijayawada. They want to use their knowledge to build something that caters to people's needs and addresses the current climatic crisis.

In preparation for the competition, the team visited our school in August to immerse and interact with our school's architecture, our construction team, school teachers and staff, our children, and understand our needs, challenges, and opportunities. 

We deeply appreciate and feel grateful for the time the team took out to be with us, listen to and learn from us, and look forwarding to supporting Team Vidhai and the opportunities that emerge for our school from this partnership!

More about Solar Decathlon India (SDI) competition:
Solar Decathlon India (SDI) is a competition for the nation's youth to let enable them to produce sensible design solutions for communities vulnerable to climate change. It focuses on 11 out of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and making the young minds to design the world a better place to live. 

Under the auspices of the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF), the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) and Alliance for an Energy-Efficient Economy (AEEE) host the Solar Decathlon India competition. The Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, supports it. 

Started in 2020, SDI has become a revolutionary competition for undergraduates and postgraduate students from India. The Solar Decathlon has been conducted in various other countries as well.

This is a belated news update!

For Solar Decathlon India (SDI) 2022-23 competition (more on SDI follows at the end of this post), we were the Project Partners for the students' team, Team Lens, from SMEF's Brick School of Architecture who were declared Runners Up in the Educational Building category in the finals of the competition held at Infosys in Mysore on May 27th, 2023.

Some other references for the news from this competition:
https://dst.gov.in/winners-solar-decathlon-india-design-challenge-net-zero-future-proof-building-2022-2023-announced
https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1927869
https://www.newsvoir.com/release/smef-apos-s-brick-school-of-architecture-shines-at-solar-decathlon-india-2023-unveiling-student-innovators-advancing-sustainable-design-solutions-24607.html

More about Solar Decathlon India competition:
Solar Decathlon India (SDI) is a competition for the nation's youth to let enable them to produce sensible design solutions for communities vulnerable to climate change. It focuses on 11 out of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and making the young minds to design the world a better place to live. 

Under the auspices of the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF), the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) and Alliance for an Energy-Efficient Economy (AEEE)  host the Solar Decathlon India competition. The Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, supports it. 

Started in 2020, SDI has become a revolutionary competition for undergraduates and postgraduate students from India. The Solar Decathlon has been conducted in various other countries as well.

We are deeply grateful and happy to finally have Rohan Nahar, Founder and Design Principal at Roots and Basics , join our efforts!

We have been waiting patiently for a few years now till Rohan could join us to deepen our efforts in sustainable architecture, where we are going to deepen to significant levels our efforts to bring people closer together so that we can deepen our intention and ability to design harmoniously with Nature. (a short bio of Rohan is at the end of this update)

Following are some glimpses of our 2-day efforts where Rohan joined Uday Goswami and construction team to review the buildings we constructed since 2019, and take all of our learnings forward, particularly with respect to ecologically and socially sustainable design.

About Rohan Nahar: Ar. Rohan Nahar, an architect who has committed his life to crafting environment-sensitive architectural designs and construction projects. Also  specialises in alternative, indigenous construction techniques and strives to work with communities.  

As the Design Principal at Roots and Basics Studio in Pune, his work is deeply rooted in the principles of sustainability, functionality, and aesthetics.  He has been practicing for over a decade with projects across various states in India and also is working as a consultant for some projects abroad. He has spent his time studying various settlements and eco-systems in Rajasthan, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Kerala. 

Having gained recognition for his innovative approach, Rohan has been invited to speak at numerous national-level forums, where he shares his insights on the intricate relationship between buildings, people, and their environments.

In addition to his professional practice, Rohan currently serves as a core faculty member at VIT'S Padmabhushan Dr. Vasantdada Patil college of architecture, Pune and likes to get his hands muddy every now and then.

 

On July 17th 2023 we inaugurated our new toilet with 100% ecological waste disposal (which we have been working on for a while and have been updating details in link-1 and link-2) and along with it, our new hybrid off-grid solar system for our new academic block. 

Both these systems would not have been possible without the support of our new partners Sunbird Trust (https://sunbirdtrust.com/), Project Chirag (https://projectchirag.org/), and our existing partner ERES (https://www.linkedin.com/company/erespl18/)

These 2 updates are a part of our larger update/developments related to our experiments in ecological harmonious practices in Natural Farming | Toilet Waste Recyling | Hybrid Solar System | Waste Segregation & Recycling that we have documented here.

We are grateful and pray that we can continue making such efforts...

With layers of brick, gravel, sand, and organic matter, we filled up the reed red that we had excavated and whose basic depth and alignment with the Jal Rakshak we tested on 21st May.

In his presentation to our school's teachers and leaders, it was validating for us when Dr Gokhale, our school's ecologist friend and designer of our ecological waste disposal system, shared with us a statement attributed to Gus Speth, an environmental lawyer:
"I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy [...] “to deal with those issues we need a spiritual and cultural transformation – and we scientists do not know how to do that.”

While we do not believe that such selfishness, greed, and apathy are intrinsic human conditions, we do observe them to be perhaps symptomatic of humanity's extreme lack of effort to cultivate, embody, and work mindfully with compassion as a real, hardworking, and needed skill to complement all it's other skills we developed in schools, colleges, and various professional domains.

We in our school are trying — taking little steps, often feeling vulnerable as models for developing compassion as a cultural as well as a systematic organizational ability and tool are far and few. The ability to be compassionate as a collective is perhaps our greatest challenge, but, perhaps, only rightly so because we also believe its one of the the greatest ability required to live harmoniously with Nature — complementary to science, for example, but just as fundamental.

Such an ecological waste disposal system is an experiment and another one of our attempts for us in developing such a collective ability to be mindful of our interedependence with Nature, scientifically and compassionately.

I cannot help but wonder, what if like the Industrial Revolution, we had a Compassion Revolution?  Or is this just the human condition? I wonder.

For a few months now, with the support of ecologist Dr Ajit Gokhale who was introduced to us by architect Rohan Nahar, we have been working on a unique (there being currently just 7 such systems in India) system for 100% ecological closed-loop recycling of waste from our school's new toilet. 

While this system uses the well-known reed bed for filtering the grey water, the unique part of it is the Jal Rakshak that helps solve the problem of obtaining dry fecal matter for aerobic composting by separating it from the water that is used to flush the toilet — the dry fecal matter falls into the composter below and the flush water is directed into the reed bed.  (While the Jal Rakshak has been used abroad, its only the recent manufacturing of it in India that has significantly brought down its cost.)

The Jal Rakshak works on the principle of the natural adhesive property of water to surfaces, which when engineered to work with Nature's centrifugal & gravity forces produces the effect of separating to greater than 99% efficiency dry fecal matter from flush water.

Today, we successfully completed the test setup of this system in our toilet and started building our reed bed system.

... of the builders of our school and our children.

May God bless us all with highest wisdom and skill of patience and compassion. 

On January 23, 2023 we finally inaugurated our school's new academic block whose construction journey began April 4, 2022. 

The inauguration ceremony was, above all, a gathering of people to thank and offer gratitude for the dedication, committment, and hardwork of our community's construction team led by their exceptional leader, Mr Pradip Singh. 

Students, teachers, leaders of our school and organization, as well as prominent people of our local and wider community gathered together to make this a memorable day for our construction team. 

This new academic block has become not just a strikingly beautiful and unique landmark in the bounded physical space-time that catches the attention of all passers-by, but also in the unbounded dimension of the hearts and minds of people as a potential symbol of the values of compassion, listening, peace, and patience that sustain such community-participatory ethos of architecture.

Its a humbling journey to nurture such values and work with groundedness in them, and anything but trivial. However, it's challenges is what we must accept and work with because compassion, we believe, can be the glue that can bind humanity into a coherent fabric of peace by giving as a framework to focus on what connects us and, like the yin-yang, also give us a framework to accept the realities of our differences. 

We write this post in a state of prayer that the wisdom of such compassion we cultivate and uphold it as one of the central pillars of our school.

More documentation of this day on various social media:

* Our architect, Uday Goswami's Facebook page
* Our school's Facebook page

On November 7th, 2022 our founder, Arjun Trivedi, was invited to share his journey at National Institute of Design Assam as a speaker at their Contemporary Design Issue course where students are given an opportunity to analyze the concept and practice of design in the current context of human existence where its interconnectedness with "issues like climate change, violence, migration, search for individual voices by multitude of peoples, reassessing existing cultural systems" cannot be ignored and must be taken into consideration. (quoted text taken from the course outline document)

An objective of this course is "stressing on empathy and social change as crucial design elements and practices today" and in this context he felt it appropriate to take along a representative cross-section of the humanity of Selenghat that has made possible such a design of our community school, Selenghat Valley School, and introduce them to the students and faculty of National Institute of Design Assam as fundamental elements of our design and a fundamental milestone of his journey, which in purely a personal sense is also his destination.

He concluded his talk with a question that continues to be a core driver of many aspects of the design our school —
Just as Nature has organized the various configurations of the physical world from the atom to the cosmos according to its physical laws, is there an order to the various configurations of human beings from individuals to larger collectives of states/countries/world as per Nature's laws of peaceful coexistence? Maybe there is and if we can get sensitive to such design elements can a peaceful order of coxistence will reveal itself?

We at Selenghat Valley School are trying to be such designers and it felt powerful to be at such a design course at National Institute of Design Assam.

Last, but not the least, we want to thank National Institute of Design Assam and particularly, Harish Singh, faculty, and Samrat Thakuria for their generous hospitality and arranging food in the mess for so many visitors ????

After the intital fundraising goal of Eur 9000 was met, we raised another Eur 4000 that helped us complete the construction of the foundation and walls of our new academic block.

However, we still needed at least another Eur 2700 to start constructing the roof and towards which we, yesterday, received funds of Eur 3100, which is now enabling us to do more than the roof :) With the excess funds we will work on the block's electrification and attaching the related fixtures.

We are feeling immensely grateful for this generous donation and it felt very nice, to say the least, to now have all the funds to complete the core construction of our new academic block and giving the green light to our construction team to proceed full steam :)

In the attached picture, the bamboo structures that will support the roof can be seen going up. Note that only the RCC part of the walls can be currently seen because the bamboo part is being assembled as panels that will be put up in due time.

The art~science of bamboo~wood work begins to emerge to finds its wholesome place in the brick~mortar structure built thus far since the Foundation Laying Ceremony on 4th April 2022 for our new academic block, which will contain 3 new classrooms and an office space for our school.

We are also in the process of submitting a proposal along with our partner Envo Renewable Energy Services Pvt. Ltd. (ERES) for installing a solar-energy and rainwater harvesting system in this block so that we are, as far as possible, self-sufficient with sustainable and empowering sources of energy, which we can demonstrate as a practical model for the various needs of our rural community. 

... of a 3-year (December 2019 - May 2022) community-architecture process of building our school ...

(This too is a post-dated update for an event that occured in March 2022! Words cannot express the depths of our immersion in action from where the space, time, and energy for written expression, to say the least, often lags behind!)

in March 2022 we made our proposal to a potential funder who has agreed to fund the entirety of our financial need. 

At the heels of wrapping up our participation as finalist in the A--D Global Challenge 2021, we would like to put up this post to show two powerful glimpses since the Foundation Laying Ceremony on 4th April 2022. 

Yes, tangible progress has been made in terms of brick and mortar being laid and two walls of one of the new classrooms coming up, which was significantly affected by mainy days of continuously heavy rain -- note the overcast skies which was the norm for this period.

But, more deeply, beyond what appears tangible in the physically obervable space-time dimensions, are powerful glimpses of a movement of people that stirs in the not-so-directly observable dimension of the hearts and minds.

In what words do we speak of all that stirs in our beings when we observe fathers of children working on building the classrooms that their children will study in as they play in the far distance? (bottom and top pictures, respectively)

A precedent is being set and we all feel it deeply. A small precedent for a peaceful movement of people to build empowering structures to access fudamental freedoms amidst a disproportionately larger landscape of conflicts whose description cannot be articulated in intellectual arguments even as encapsulated in systems and processes of law and order because deeply the arguments that need to be had are emotional, and what needs to, at least accompany the intellectual processes, are the processes of the heart -- of an open heart, a listening heart, and a brave heart to listen to each other and first cultivate the foundation of trust that seems to mostly eroded. 

Inshallah, may we all continue to take little steps, day by day, guided above all by the wisdom that teaches us to be patient and compassionate above all. May we continue to argue by action, building our arguments little by little, day by day, and may our "words come out from the depths of [such] truth[s]" (as noted by the the poet Rabindra Nath Tagore in his poem Where The Mind Is Without Fear)

(Please note that this a post-dated update events that occured between 25-31st March, 2022)

Through Architecture-in-Development's social media reachout on our behalf for our need to connect with a Water Harvesting systems specialist (on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook), Abhimanyu Verma, who not only has hands-on experience with such systems, but is able to integrate it in his wholesome perspective and experience in ecological design and conservation, connected with us and visited us for a week between 25th - 31st March, 2022. (For those interested, I highly recommend viewing a comprehensive video presentation that Abhimanyu put together on water harvesting technologies, its science, art, and humanity, across ancient and modern India, for World Water Day 2021 organized by Delhi Urban Network, Beyond Trees Network and US Forest Service International Programs.)

In addition to conducting surveys related to designing our water harvesting systems with the vision of making our school, as far as possible, reliant on such technologies for our daily needs, he also undertook wider surveys/studies in the area to help us design our school as a model for wholesome ecological design and conservation that exists not in isolation, but in synergy with the needed ecological realities of life around us, which includes the practical needs of the human beings, plants, and animals around us.

He concluded his visit by sharing with our school's teachers and staff his experiences with ecological conservation and design, and why such should become an important aspect for education in our times.

Godwilling, we will be able to take little steps, day by day, towards such a wholesome vision. May God bless us all with the wisdom to be patient and consistent with our efforts.

[19th April, 2022] Glimpses as small sightings of powerful, even ineffable, experiences of the foundation laying ceremony of Selenghat Valley School.

In a previous update we noted our collaboration with a solar panel expert, Fazle Muztaba. In this update we note in detail information about his organization, Envo Renewable Energy Services Pvt. Ltd. (ERES), of which he is the Co-Founder and Managing Director.

ERES is a rural energy enterprise creating a holistic ecosystem to provide reliable energy access in the most remote and vulnerable areas of the North East Region of India. 

ERES is working in the most remote and vulnerable areas of the region bringing in renewable energy intervention in household and community lighting, health, education, livelihood, disaster relief and allied or related activities , has impacted the life of around 600,000 rural populations till date. ERES promotes clean and green energy to createv avenues for asset building, enhancement in quality of life and wealth creation that will uplift deprived sections of society through sustainable development solutions.

(Please note that this a delayed update for an event that occured on 21st March, 2022)

... to begin construction on a large and prominent piece of land entrusted to our school after more than 2 years of hard work to patiently set a precedent for community action, working hardest perhaps in the domain of hearts and minds of people, than what manifests materially in the visible space-time dimensions.

No words or pictures can encapsulate the tremendous depth of these ground-breaking moments, perhaps aptly documented in the humbling simplicty of a prayer ceremony and hand-held equipment to mark the land and begin the process of digging the earth. 

(Please note that this a delayed update for an event that occured on 20th February, 2022)

On 20th February 2022 we were happy to finally welcome Fazle Muztaba and his team from Guwahati to begin collaboration on integrating solar panels in our new school buildings whose planning has been in an immersive process. (The meeting took place in our recently completed classroom, Tora Ghar.)

Fazle Muztaba is the Co-Founder & Managing Director of Envo Renewable Energy Services Pvt. Ltd., a rural energy enterprise creating a holistic ecosystem to provide reliable energy access in the most remote and vulnerable areas of the North East Region of India. 

Tora Ghar, on February 15th 2022, welcomed its first students after schools in Assam were allowed to open after yet another long COVID related shutdown of schools. 

With the construction of Tora Ghar that began on October 4th 2021 now complete, it feels particularly satisfying to click the following picture of the architectural landscape of our exploratory school-block where we began our experiments with community architecture in 2019.

Please note the recent addition of colorful fences made out of bamboo and plastic bottles (in red and yellow) to keep out livestock from our school's kitchen garden, which we plan to use for exploring and understanding life based on the values and practices of methods ranging from science to compassion.

… , a giant leap for mankind” — words inspired by Neil Armstrong deeply stir in me as we set foot on land that has anything but easy for our community as a collective to entrust our school with. 

Our challenges may not compare as directly with the immense space-time extent of the journey to moon. Nevertheless, I believe there is something just as profound happening, at least in the context of our people, when such words stir from every part of my being in a mix of cathartic relief that is simultaneously grounded in the humility of our challenges, and the yin-yang of the challenges-opportunities of the years to come.  The space extent of this land is infinitesimally small in comparison to the moon, but the internal dimensions of the journey in the hearts and minds of people, and its related non-linearity of time, just as profound. (For completeness, no small step for a collective humanity is without the such profound movements in the hearts and minds of people, which includes the journey to the moon that cannot be reduced in isolation to purely an achievement of science and engineering, even if that is most directly impressive.)

Following is a video glimpses of this great day for us (29th January, 2022). The video begins with moments before stepping onto the the land as we reflected on the progress of our new classroom on the small piece of land where we began our attempt to set a precedent for community action more than 2 years ago and going over the construction plan for the new land, which is separated by a paddy field and is stone's throw distance away. 

January 2, 2022 was a significant day for us, one that we had been imagining and believing to happen in due time, when the work of our community would organically build relationships with people outside of it, and whose participation with us would begin to complete to yet another fundamental order of magnitude the landscape of a wholesome ecosystem to grow and nurture our school. 

The power of the picture below where Uday Goswami is presenting our school's architectural plan to its first formal board of advisors can barely be expressed in words, but, we pray, will unfurl in the hard work of action on the ground. 

We are grateful to have on this board as its first members:

1. Purnima Contractor who is an Early Education Development (ECD) consultant and President, Association for Early Childhood Education and Development, Mumbai (AECED). She brings to us the combined experience of the theory and practice of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE).

2. Krishna Dutta Deka who is a senior lecturer at the esteemed District Institute of Education and Training (DIET), Jorhat, Assam and who along with expertise in ECCE, also brings to us the interface of education with its policies at various local and state government, and also international levels.   

3. Dr Gautam Barua is currently a Professor in the Dept of Computer Science and Engineering, and also the Director of Indian Institute of Inforamation Technology, Guwahati. In addition to being a researcher and academic, he is also an institution builder -- he has and continues to be involved at high levels of building academic institutions in various parts of India, which includes being at the helm of building both IIT and IIIT, Guwahati.

The little steps our rural community has been taking to build a community school has now begun to connect with paths of people working at a national level and beyond -- experienced early education practioners and esteemed institution builders. This update, along with this tremendous practical update, is also a contemplation on this organic journey and also a prayer that it remains so.

We want to especially note how warm and committed the presence of our advisors was at the meeting, which was expressed by their genuine happiness and interest to be working with us, and their critical feedback to our plans. 

This post is a peek into our preparation to take a leap standing on the foundation created by more than 2 years of taking little steps to set a precedent for community action in the tea-plantations of Assam in a small exploratory piece of land where we continue to build our newest classroom.

We are now getting ready to build on a significantly larger and prominent piece of land that came to be given to our school because of a growing coherency among the various stakeholders of the tea plantation where we are located. 

The picture below is a construction plan that is emerging from our architects in conversation with the school staff, community construction workers and the community at large, and our first official board of advisors for the school which has its first members two Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) academics and practitioners, and an institution builder who has helmed building of renowned institutions not just in Assam, but in other places of India as well.

More details will follow in subsequent updates. At the outset this update is a peek into what is to come, but deeply it is a contemplation of our progress that continue to dance between the surreal and real.

11th December 2021

The thought of sharing a picture of Tora Ghar made particularly beautiful in the winter setting sun felt like a warm update to share. Since the last update, the roof made of leaves of a local tree is complete and modular frames made of bamboo and wood are going up and will finally make up the walls of our new classroom. 

2nd December 2021

The construction of Tora Ghar, the new classroom for our school began on 4th October, 2021, and this is what it looks like today.

As Tora Ghar begins to emerge next to Beli Ghar, which was our first experience in community-architecture, more than its architectural impact, what stirs most deeply in me is the emergence of little steps of a humanity, which I pray manifests in a giant leap, little by little, day by day, nourished above all by the wisdom of patience.

October 2021 has been the launchpad for a new wave of our community-architecture effort, which in addition to "Construction of Tora Ghar (Star House) Begins" and "Community Ownsership of Donated Land" (see posts below), also saw the launch of our "Call To Action" campaign to generate support from existing supporters and also to reachout to new ones. 

This campaign included a series of 8 posts curated by Jayesh Goswami based on experiences captured in pictures and words over the last 2 years to share the journey of our community school thus far.

This series has been put together in a combined Call To Action document. Below are the links to each item in the series.

1. https://www.facebook.com/karunarkheti/posts/633625418075835
2. https://www.facebook.com/karunarkheti/posts/634830907955286
3. https://www.facebook.com/karunarkheti/posts/637261827712194
4. https://www.facebook.com/karunarkheti/posts/638077407630636
5. https://www.facebook.com/karunarkheti/posts/639405244164519
6. https://www.facebook.com/karunarkheti/posts/641666180605092
7. https://www.facebook.com/karunarkheti/posts/643275963777447
8. https://www.facebook.com/karunarkheti/posts/644468976991479

4th October 2021

Consruction of our 2nd new classroom, Tora Ghar (Star House) began next to Beli Ghar (Sun House).

The construction crew for this classroom are from a different sub-community of our larger community, and therefore, this experience is also a new learning and collaborative experience, which we hope is going to our imagined visioned of a dynamically coherent diversity of the poeple.  

3rd October 2021 was a significant day in the history of our organization and also in the 175-year history of the tea-plantations of Assam.

After 2 years of establishing a precedent for a people's movement with promise of peace and harmony, the ownsership and management of Boisahabi Tea Estate confidentally, hopefully, and enthusiastically entrusted a large piece of land measuring 11.5 hectares (15000 square meters) to the Board of Trustees of Karunar Kheti Trust that comprises the tea estate's tea-pluckers, blue collar workers of the tea factory, office clerk, a student union leader, and the founder of the organization. 

Such a step is unprecedented in the history of the tea-plantations of Assam and words cannot express the profound its significance.

To mark this day, a Shram Daan (volunteer donation of labour) was organized led by the Board of Trustees to clear the land of long-standing weedy growth and prepare it for the upcoming construction. This effort to clear the field was secondary to the symbolic intention of the poeple to step on the land as a collective and make known the intention to work hard to clear the air of conflict and disempowerment, and usher in an era of peace and empowerment.