Mr. Sten Melson and Mrs. Nette Velsen helped Tibetan schools in setting up kitchen garden in their schools.

From 1st to 5th April 2011, they started the kitchen garden program at Sherab Gatsel Lobling School, Dharamsala. This school is more popularly known as the Tibetan Transit School. The school has new comers from Tibet who are little above age to go to normal Tibetan schools in India. Here in this school, besides Tibetan and English as languages, the students are taught basics in computer and other life skills.

In this school, with the help of all the school prefects and some staff, Sten and Nette worked on turning an unused plot of land into a kitchen garden. They were really amazed to see the kind of efforts the participants put in and the enthusiasm shown by them in

setting up a school kitchen garden. On occasions, they had to walk a distance to collect river sand but no one showed any sign of disinterest. At the end of 5 days, the school now has a wonderful kitchen garden. Mr. Karma Chungdak la, the Director of Sambhota Tibetan Schools Society was there to give away the certificates to the participants. He urged the students to carry forward to the good work started by Sten and Nette.

They then had a short visit to Sambhota Tibetan School Bhuntar where they inspected the well maintained kitchen garden. They were really impressed by the progress made by the school in general and the kitchen garden in particular.

From 8th to 12th, Sten and Nette started making kitchen gardens for the homes in TCV Suja with the help from the home mothers. There too the home mothers showed great interest and at the end of 5 days, they were able to build kitchen gardens outside many homes of the schools. The Director of the schools thanked Sten and Nette for their kind guidance in setting up the kitchen gardens. He thanked the two for the sincere effort to help the Tibetan community.

Sten and Nette finally left for Denmark on 14th after successfully helping the Tibetan schools in setting up kitchen gardens. Mrs. Nette took time in both the schools to educate the students on diets and nutrition.

With this we hope that schools can now have some kind of self – sustainability in providing vegetables for the school kitchens. These vegetables will be surely more nutritious and natural. We thank them for their hard work and for their kind sincere effort to be of some help to the Tibetan community.

We also thank the administrations and the concerned schools for their kind cooperation in helping us with our effort to set up kitchen gardens in their schools. We hope the schools will keep up the good work started by Sten and Nette.
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