Turf Cutting Ceremony, Darjeeling November 2012

A report by Penny Hambly who visited Darjeeling and who spent some of her time visiting the orphanage

 (Hugh, DCT Trustee:)  “I can’t really see why it’s not possible to actually start the orphanage rebuild……” 

Nor, it soon transpired, could anyone else.  A few days passed -  me enjoying the many sights and cafes of Darjeeling,  whilst others sweated over meetings, discussions, mails and phone calls – and before you could say “Kanchenjunga”,  here we were, marching down, the Major at the helm,  to the boys orphanage for the turf cutting ceremony.  In addition to our small group (the Major, Hugh, Ricky and me),  I was anticipating Pema Bhante and a few of the boys being ‘on parade’ at 8.30 sharp. Not so. Despite the Major’s observation that “We say 8.30, and we mean 8.30” – a steady trickle of SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE  - governors, project manager, orphanage management board members - swelled the little crowd  teetering down the precipitous path to the new site for the next  half hour or so.  Along with the boys in immaculate uniforms and flip-flopped feet, and half a dozen orange- robed young monks, we grouped around a little makeshift shrine of bricks, incense, flowers, milk and candles.     

The assembly hushed as the monks began to chant and Hugh was invited to choose from an alarming selection of shovels and picks to strike the turf.  I thought this would be it; job done, but  it was just the start. The chant continued and there was polite applause before the second volunteer stepped up to swing the pick. And so it went on – Pema Bhante, the Major, the project manager, Ricky, the orphanage accountant, one of the boys – and even I was invited to have a go. Before long, quite a little pit had been dug, and in it, the bricks, candles and incense sticks were buried to bring good fortune to the building work.

There was more: khata scarves were presented to us and many photos taken. Finally we made our way back up, and at this point I bid a reluctant farewell to the jolly gathering in order to head back to Kolkata.  I certainly couldn’t have asked for a more exciting end; all those who have worked so hard towards this day deserve heartfelt congratulations…. and this is just the beginning!

Great News!

A ceremonial breaking of the ground for Phase 1 of the orphanage redevelopment took place on Thursday 1^st November. In attendance were Pema Bhante, the head monk who looks after the children at both orphanages, DCT Trustee Hugh Heron, and members of the Kripasaran Management Board.

It is an exciting time after the last few months which have been quiet ones in Darjeeling. Everyone has been waiting for the monsoon to (mostly) disappear and the air to clear. As November starts the finer weather should gradually take hold and it becomes increasingly possible to carry out building works.

The letter of appointment has been issued by the Orphanage Management Board to the project management consultant, and plans are now in place for purchase of materials and employment of labourers. The materials must all be purchased some four hours’ drive away in Siliguri and then brought by lorry about 2150metres (about 7000 ft) up twisting mountain roads to the town. They will be unloaded on the main road near the orphanage site and then, because the orphanage has no vehicular access, they will need to be carried by porters about 100m steeply downhill to the site. It is backbreaking work but this is how things have to be done in Darjeeling. Much of the early work will also involve clearance of the site and the breaking up of the rocks which project from its surface to allow construction of the new retaining walls and the level concrete floor slabs. A view looking up the site on which the new buildings are to sit is attached.

All has not been quiet in the UK however and the Trust has been successful in obtaining a grant of £5000 towards the costs of professional project management fees for Phase 1 and the purchase of new bunk beds for all the 60 boys who will inhabit the new dormitories. This sum represents just under 50% of the total cost of these two items and is a great fillip to fund raising. Work is now well under way to identify other charitable foundations from the 12-1300 which exist in the UK to whom further grant applications may be made to support the development proposals.

We can also start the task of fund raising for Phase 2. The architect employed by Darjeeling Children’s Trust to design the new buildings is currently finalising the detailed drawings for this second phase which will allow more accurate estimates to be produced. The original figures were produced over 2 years ago and totalled about £120,000 but India, as all other countries, has suffered from inflation and this figure is now likely to be higher. All this information is needed to allow grant applications to be made and to provide reassurance to potential funders that the proposals are well grounded and well thought through.

More photos to follow!

Pema Bhante talks about the redevelopment project

It's always surprising how long the simplest task can take to accomplish in India – and the orphanage rebuilding project is not the simplest task! Everyone had hoped that the first spade would be put into the ground this spring but when faced with a structural engineer who took twice as long as anticipated to complete his input and then with estimates that seemed far too high, the process has ground slowly on. 

And now the weather is the major hurdle. In winter the cold winds blow down from the high Tibetan plateau and give cold hard skies but in summer the wind turns in direction and Darjeeling is affected by major weather systems which come up to the mountains bearing lots of moisture from the Bay of Bengal. This results in pre-monsoon rains from early May onwards with frequent downpours and days when the mist encompasses everything and all your possessions become gradually damper – which to the visitor seem like monsoon conditions – but these are in turn replaced in June by days of incessant rain which drives people mad as it drums on tin roofs. In these conditions building works are impossible. 

Nevertheless work on fund raising is carrying on here in the UK and in India, where it is led by Pema Bhante, the monk in charge of both the girls’ and boys’ homes. Pema Bhante was himself an orphanage boy who went on to go to university and then entered the banking profession. He feels though that his calling is to look after the children in Darjeeling and has refused other job offers, turning down a request to become second in command at the Bhuddist temple in London and also to lecture at a major Indian university. He is unmarried – Bhuddist monks may belong to a number of different sects, some of which are celibate and some where the monks marry and have children – and lives a fairly spartan life at the boys’ orphanage. 

Looking after the children is a fairly stressful life. Pema Bhante has been in dialogue with the West Bengal government which is based hundreds of miles away in Kolkata for the last two to three years, trying to get them to pay him the right level of grant for the number of children and young people he houses. The funds he is given have only covered about two thirds of the number he has in his care. Recently he has managed to enlist the help of a government minister so he hopes that gradually the matter will be resolved. The money he raises for the rebuilding project are kept separate and protected for this purpose. In the short recording of him in his office he describes the need for the new buildings. Describing the girls’ accommodation as cozee (an Indian euphemism for over-crowded) makes things sound so much better than they really are. The link to the short film is 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZGDnbzhdDI

Costs are finalised- we're nearly ready to start

Some great news has come in from Darjeeling this week: our architect, Raghavan has spent the weekend in Darjeeling finalising costs and making sure that we have a financial plan ready for phase 1. And now, we do! We need to build a new retaining wall on site to make sure that the structure remains stable and then the main foundations can be dug.

Here are a couple of photos of the surveying work that was carried out on site:

The photos show Pema Bhante, the head of the Kripasaran Mission, Ranjeeta Prasad and Ramesh Rasailly who will be project managing the whole process.

The moment of the first turf being dug comes ever closer!

Some exciting progress

This week has seen a momentous event in the progress towards the rebuilding project. After an assessment was made of the first set of estimates which had been received for construction of Phase 1 which will provide the dormitory accommodation for all 60 boys, it was decided that these were far too high and the level of costs included were unjustifiable. Consequently after consultation with colleagues in Darjeeling, Raghavan the Trust's architect provided a set of figures which can be used as a benchmark against which any further estimates will be judged.
 
One of the difficulties in Darjeeling is in gathering a group of professionals in whom you can have confidence to do the job properly. A meeting was held with a local architect, Ranjeeta Prasad who has been involved in various ways with the redevelopment project over the last three years or so. She has identified a reliable site engineer who has just been employed with the building of a new auditorium at Northpoint School, one of the two large prestigious private schools in the town, and together with him has offered to manage the construction work including gathering the labourers and craftsmen necessary to do the job.
 
On Thursday the Orphanage Redevelopment Management Board held a meeting where they considered two options, either to manage the whole construction process themselves or to invite Ranjeeta Prasad to submit a quote to do the work. After lengthy discussions they have chosen the latter path and on Monday 16th April a site meeting will be held to discuss some of the details of how construction will be organised. Materials will have to be bought in Silguri, a town on the plains some four hours travel away on the plains; these will have to brought up to Darjeeling and then unloaded on a busy main road and taken by porter down a narrow lane of fairly steep steps for about 100 yards as there is no direct vehicle access to the orphanage site. All this will add costs to the project. Before the contract is signed by Pema Bhante on behlaf of the Kripasaran Bhuddist Foundation the final approval for the plans is needed from the municipal government but it is thought this should be quickly forthcoming.
 
The contract will be sub-divided between the "civils" which are essentially the structural elements and the finishing items which include plumbing, floors and woodwork. Enough money has been raised for the civils to be done, especially as once work starts more donations will come in, probably in kind and it will be important for information to be given out about grades of cement and quality of bricks. Just over 50% of the total cost has been raised in India and the remainder in the UK. 
 
It is hoped that the contract will be let very quickly and work will start at a rate which will result in the concrete slab levels being finished before the worst of the monsoon starts in early-mid June. There will then need to be a break during the rains with the project restarting in September/October with an end date by the end of December 2012. This timetable will also allow the cost of the finishing items to be raised, they amount to about 7000GBP. Fund raising is going on in India as well as in other locations.
 

Waiting for building to start

It’s sometimes easy to get impatient waiting for the redevelopment plans to commence as some of the work has been low profile although it is hugely important. Over the last few months one of the big issues has been resolved - that of clarifying site ownership and confirming it with the land registry in Darjeeling. This has taken many visits to the large ledger filled municipal offices by Pema Bhante the monk in charge of the orphanages but he now has the confirmation certificate which will give us all confidence that this is a viable project in which to put money. 

The Trust has also employed a lawyer to draw up a legal agreement between the Management Board based in Darjeeling and the Darjeeling Children's Trust which seeks to ensure that monies raised for the redevelopment are only used for that purpose once they have been sent from the UK by the Trust. A small blip has arisen in this process though, the Trust's lawyer has fallen and broken her shoulder so the final version of the document is currently awaited and it is hoped it will arrive in the next few days. It is planned that Pema Bhante will call together a meeting of the Management Board when all will sign.

Work has been going on by the Structural Engineer who has provided half the information required to allow the final cost of Phase 1 to be established and a programme of construction to be identified. The outstanding figures should be with the Trust within the week.

Chairperson of the Trust, Marilyn Adams, is currently in Darjeeling and hopes to take enough footage of both the girls' and boys' existing accommodation to allow a short film to be made about the project.

The project is off and running!

Hello to all supporters of the orphanage appeal, and a very Happy New Year!

It's the start of 2012, and the start of the regular progress updates about the orphanage project in Darjeeling of which you are a very generous supporter. As such you are helping us to make this vitally important project a reality, and together we will achieve the rebuilding of the Kripasaran Orphanage to ensure that the 100 young people living in the two existing separate orphanage buildings have a safe and suitable home to live in long into the future.

So what's been happening in Darjeeling? After much searching the charity found a great firm of structural engineers based in the local area, who spent the last month doing soil evaluation tests to make sure that the foundations for the orphanage are built deep and strong enough to cope with the fact that Darjeeling is in a landslip and earthquake zone. Now the results of the tests are back, the architect is working with the engineer to finalise the construction standards to allow detailed and up-to-date costings to be prepared, We still hope that with the available money held both here in the UK and in Darjeeling that it will be possible to start construction of the foundations before onset of the monsoon makes this impossible.

At the same time, a project management team has been brought together who will oversee the build and make sure that the project runs as smoothly as possible. They have a vast range of expertise and are mostly India-based, with two of the UK-based trustees also being members of the management board who dial in to meetings on a regular basis to keep in touch. They will be providing us with progress reports on a regular basis and I will of course share these with you as the project progresses. It will be a learning experience for everyone involved, and I look forward to being able to blog about each exciting development as it happens on the ground.

If you know anyone else who would be interested in either joining the 100 Darjeeling Children Appeal (and having their name added to the plaque of donors in the completed orphanage building) or just donating to the cause, please let them know that they can email info@darjeelingchildrenstrust.com, go to our website at www.darjeelingchildrenstrust.com or even make a one-off donation on our justgiving site, at www.justgiving.com/dctappeal.

To look at older blog posts, use the date labels on the right-hand side of this page to jump back through previous updates, and follow the life of the project as it develops.

I'll be in touch soon, but in the meantime welcome to the project and thanks to each and every one of you!

Penny
Trustee, Darjeeling Children's Trust