La Vie est Bien

Raj and I are vacationing in Ladakh, and we had an opportunity to visit the #SECMOLCampus - the inspiration behind the super hit movie 3 Idiots! To say the least, we were beyond inspired - yet the Q remains, will I send R n D to a school like this if I had a choice! Founded by Sonam Wangchuk and inaugurated by HH the Dalai Lama, the  SECMOL Campus is located near the village of  Phey  in the  Indus valley  in the outskirts of Leh. The Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) is an alternative education system that focuses on sustainability, leadership and culture. The motto of the school is to move away from 3 Rs (Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic) to 3 Hs - Bright Head, Kind Heart and Skilled Hands, and the student guide who took us around the school on a tour seemed to be displaying this, and he’d been here for less than a month or so! ‘Learning by Doing’ vs blackboard and books makes this school stand out - and one can’t but gape at how different life is out here

Have you ever wondered why we celebrate ‘International Women’s Day’ every year? One such google search a few years ago led me to this  —>  Labour activist Theresa Malkiel is credited to have begun a movement in New York in 1909, yet it was only in 1975 that the UN began celebrating International Women’s Day (IWD).  Starting 1977, the UN General Assembly declared  March 8  as  ‘International Women’s Day’  in support of women’s rights and global peace, and since then has commemorated the day by establishing a theme each year. The IWD 2023 theme is  #EmbraceEquity . It seeks to get the world talking about why equal  opportunities are no longer enough  - and can in fact be exclusionary, rather than inclusive. While many of us use the words ‘Equality’ and ‘Equity’ inter-changeably,  Equality  means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities, whereas   Equity  recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and