School to school programme

In early 2002, the Oppsal School in Oslo, Norway partnered with a school in the Binny Mills area of Bangalore. The students began by exchanging letters, drawings and poems of their lives and aspirations. The professional letter writing service, which diligently responded to its mission and provided its services free of charge, helped teach children to write letters at school.

Very soon, this turned into the first exchange programme between the Indian Binny Mills school and the Norwegian Oppsal school.

Drawing on the nature of this exchange, and the myriad, meaningful and mutual benefits for the two groups of students, Peace Child India has organied several dozen school exchanges involving schools from the UK, US, Sweden, Austria and Germany with more than 15 schools across South India.

The school groups are involved in one week of intense volunteer work and interaction in the Indian partner school, following which they go off on an adventurous and educational tour of India.

• General details
• Meaningful tour options:
• Kaveri Experience
• Godavari Experience
• Kali Experience
• Tunga Experience

• Oppsal School, Oslo - Norway
• Impington College, Cambridge - UK
• Harris City Academy Crystal Palace, London - UK
• Fettes College, Edinburgh - UK
• St. Charles' Caltholic School, London - UK
• St. Francis Xavier's 6th Form College, London - UK

Undertake to refurbish an old classroom in a Government school into a reading room. Install library bookshelves and computers, create a working space. Work with the Indian students.

Participate in a joint theatre performance with the Indian school students, usually on the theme of participatory education or health, using props, masks and puppets.

For other volunteer options please see the meaningful tours section

Go on an educational, adventure tour of South India. This tour covers hiking, ancient temples, boating and living in a forest.

For more details visit the meaningful tours section.

As the idea is to experience another culture, the school group tours involve dressing up in Indian clothes, learning to cook Indian food and learning Indian dance. An evening is reserved for watching an Indian film and a day reserved for shopping and orientation.

All this is done with the participation of Indian volunteers, students and other staff, so the potential of making new and lasting friendships is tremendous.

A full, detailed schedule of day to day events is provided at the beginning of every school group tour. There is room for customisation of the tour; for example, some school groups would prefer to visit the seaside than the forest expedition.

We are not a travel agency and as such we do not have an ABTA or equivalent certification or membership. We run the school visit programme as a consequence of our main work in India and it is a completely non-profit operation. We strongly recommend full and complete health and travel insurance for all participants and their mentors before traveling to India.

From arrival in India till departure (airport pick up to drop off), the organisation will fulfill committments made to you as per the travel and work schedule provided. Barring 'force majeure' conditions (i.e. a catastrophic event completely beyond the control of the organisation), the committments will be met in full.

Health and safety arrangements are paramount in our preparations, based on years of experience of handling tens of school groups. Select transport and accommodation facilities are made available to visiting groups and where necessary, standbys are in place in the unlikely event of having to use alternate arrangements.

All flight and travel arrangements before arrival in India are the responsibility of the visiting group, and Peace Child India will not be able to guarantee any arrangements, travel or otherwise that lie outside the schedules agreed upon by us. In the event that flights are missed or delayed, we will be flexible (within reason) in our transport and accommodation arrangements to suit the anomaly.