Mondo Challenge Kalimpong

Mondo Challenge Kalimpong has been working in Darjeeling District of North East India since 2002. We work with 15 local schools in different villages in Darjeeling and Kalimpong Sub-Division. Through financial supports from charitable organisations and individual donors, we strive to provide a various supports to primary and secondary schools in the Darjeeling hills in order to ensure poor children in rural areas to have access to quality education opportunities.

MCK works closely with MondoChallenge Foundation (http://mondochallengefoundation.org/home.html), it's partner in the UK, which funds many of MCK's core activities.

Our supports to the partner schools include:
- Provision of education grants to supplement teacher’s salaries and school tuition fees;
- Teacher training to improve teachers' skills and competencies in effective teaching;
- Construction of school buildings to provide deprived school children with improved studying environments;
- Placement of volunteers who help partner schools by teaching English and other subjects;
- Provision of school bags with stationeries funded by School in a Bag (http://www.schoolinabag.org/)
- Financing and coordinating inter-school sports and quiz competitions and other events;
- Provision of a forum for parent teacher association meetings in each school to further involve parents in their child’s education;
- Assisting and promoting organic farming practice in a number of schools to enhance children's learning of agriculture and farming, and to make the schools self-sufficient economically.
- Organising environmental protection and sanitation promotion activities to raise awareness of children and their parents.

Also, in order to create income streams for village communities, we are currently running Village Discovery Tours (http://kalimpongvillagetour.wordpress.com/) offering atmospheric home stays with guided trekking through scenic villages in Kalimpong, where a number of our partner schools are concentrated.