What Schools in Kargil Taught Me About Learning, Listening, and Community Care
What if the answers to some of our public health and education challenges were already living in the community – waiting only for us to stop, listen, and learn?
That is the question I came back with after spending three days in Kargil, Ladakh, visiting schools where rZamba works. rZamba envisions “Every Child in Ladakh empowered through equitable and quality education, to drive lasting and meaningful change in Ladakh and beyond.” I went as part of a Professional Development Grant (PDG) visit, expecting to observe. I came back having been taught by children, by ASHA workers, and by a community that is quietly building something remarkable.
In this blog, I want to share what I witnessed across education, health, and communities in Kargil, and why I believe it holds lessons that reach far beyond the mountains where it is happening.
rZamba with a Long-Term Vision
rZamba aims to act as a bridge between people, resources, systems, and the community at large. The approach to the Holistic Child Wellbeing Program is to enhance the quality of education in Kargil, which centres on social-emotional learning, phonics, project-based learning, classroom library, winter alternatives, teachers’ training, empowering youth and strengthening school systems through community collaboration and what struck me immediately was how deliberately this is all designed for sustainability.
The involvement of the Village Education Committee, a decentralised grassroots body in rural villages, is designed to ensure community participation in the management of local schools in supporting school functioning. In Kargil, they are mainly helping with the winter alternative program for kids during winter when schools are shut. It made me realise that lasting change only happens when the community becomes part of it and takes ownership. It also made me reflect on my own work in the Haridwar district on perinatal mental health. I started thinking about how a similar community-based approach could also help with health-related work. For example, village meetings where the village head, community members, and frontline workers come together, such as during Village Health and Nutrition Days (VHND), could be used to discuss important health topics and plan activities based on the needs of the community. I felt that involving the community in this way could make the work much easier and more effective.
“How Are You Feeling Today?” Three Words That Changed My Thinking
The second day was something that really stayed with me emotionally. We visited a government school and interacted with children from Grade 3. I observed good infrastructure and sitting areas with proper placement and different kinds of chairs for different classes, which I don’t see often where I stayed. I observed a session where the rZamba facilitator started by simply asking the children, “How are you feeling today?” Then the children shared why they were feeling that way one by one, and they could also decide among themselves who would go first, and the conversation gently moved toward how are you feeling today, to what they could do with that feeling. It felt so simple, but it takes a lot of effort to reach that stage to find words for how they are feeling.
What struck me most was how openly children spoke, how patiently others listened without interrupting, and how naturally empathy existed in that room. It didn’t feel forced. It felt safe. And further, we also talked about safe space and children unhesitatingly speaking what their safe and unsafe space is, and how for girls and boys these are different spaces for being safe and where they feel unsafe. Most boys feel unsafe when a dog approaches near the river, and girls feel unsafe when some men touch inappropriately at someone’s home. I found myself connecting with the children, and what surprised me was that after sharing, they asked me how I was feeling and what’s safe and unsafe space for me? When they asked me a question, it made me think about my own school days. I remember being scared to ask questions, scared to answer even when I knew the answer, and definitely never having a space where someone asked how I was feeling. Seeing children grow in an environment where Socio-emotional Learning (SEL) is part of learning, which felt very new to me, I wish more classrooms and schools would have.
When a Child Leads the Lesson
The third day brought a different kind of revelation. I was sitting through a phonics session by small kids were demonstrating what they learn in last class after it got over, I casually said, “Okay, what next?” and a child immediately ran to the classroom library corner (classroom library was so vibrant and arranged so beautifully with kids work and books), returned with animal flashcards, and announced: “Let’s read this.”
I had never seen student-led learning happen so instinctively. My own schooling was always syllabus-driven and teacher-led. Here, curiosity was the engine. I joined in, we sat around, passed flashcards around, made animal sounds, and asked children which animals they saw near their homes. After we finished, another child quietly gathered the cards, returned them to the library sack, and brought out a new set. Everyone moved on together. Effortlessly agree to read another set of flashcards.
It all flowed so naturally. And it made me think about how rarely we create spaces in classrooms or in health programmes where the people we serve are trusted to lead.
Meeting with Chief Medical Officer (CMO)
The second half of my third day took me to meet the Chief Medical Officer of the District Hospital in Kargil and the ASHA Coordinator over a cup of Kahwa. She was incredibly patient and genuinely interested in understanding my work on perinatal mental health, which is the focus of my work in Uttarakhand. In turn, I was eager to learn how mental health is approached within their health system. What began as a conversation soon became a meaningful exchange, with both of us learning about each other’s work and experiences. What I found is how general mental health is catered, from the Community Health Officers (CHOs) who are trained in mental health, and many of whom live within the communities at the residential health and wellness centre they serve. Pharmacists receive counselling training on awareness generation related to mental health and drugs. The District Mental Health Programme arranges monthly once event in the community and prescribes and distributes medicine to those in need.
Mental health concerns here include substance use among school-going children, personality-related difficulties, and family breakdown, a reminder that mental health needs span the entire life course, not just clinical thresholds. Yet there were no dedicated programs related to maternal mental health; it’s more generalised.
Meeting with ASHA
The most powerful moment of the visit came during my conversation with ASHAs. An ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) serves as the first point of contact between the community and the public health system. As per our discussion on maternal and child health, how it’s working over in Kargil, awareness of services, challenges women face during the perinatal period and shifting toward maternal mental health. I got to understand that without a dedicated perinatal mental health programme, they are already having the right conversations about emotional support during pregnancy, managing anxiety, family dynamics, and recognising early signs of distress.
One ASHA’s counselling words for pregnant women stopped me completely:
“Jab maa roti hai to andar bachcha bhi rota hai… woh kehta hai, Maa mujhe bahar aane do, main sab theek kar doonga.”
(When a mother cries, the baby inside also cries… it says, ‘Mother, let me come out, I will make everything okay.’)
And to the husbands she would say:
“Tang karega isko to bachcha kaise paida hoga? Jitna yeh khush rahegi, utna tere liye achha hoga.”
(If you trouble her, how will the baby be born healthy? The happier she is, the better it is for you.)
These words came from someone with no formal perinatal mental health training. And yet, she understood deeply and instinctively that a mother’s emotional state shapes everything: her health, her baby’s health, the whole family’s wellbeing. When I told her about my work, her eyes lit up. She had questions. She wanted to understand more about what signs to look for during pregnancy, what mental health screening looks like, and how she could use any of it in her daily work.
But what moved me even more was what she asked for next. She wanted a BP machine. Her own one because of something very simple: most of the time, she visits women at night. The hospital is far, and by the time anyone gets there, the moment to act may already be gone. She just wanted to be able to check whether a woman was at risk and do something about it before it became a crisis. She requested repeated training on skills under maternal and child health. Sitting with her, I kept thinking: this is exactly the kind of person every health system should be investing in. She is not waiting to be told what to do. She already knows what her community needs. She just needs the training, the tools, and the trust to act on it.
I came back by more convinced than ever that with the right support and with adequate resources, ASHAs like her could be the most powerful first point of care we have for maternal health, for mental health, for early childhood. Not just in Kargil. Everywhere.
What I Am Taking Back
Working in perinatal mental health in Haridwar, I often think about how to make the programme more community-rooted and sustainable. rZamba’s model in the schools of Kargil gave me a clearer picture of what community collaboration actually looks like in practice. It looks like Village Education Committees are taking ownership of winter alternatives. It looks like an ASHA who has found her own language for talking about maternal mental health because she genuinely cares. It looks like a child who feels safe enough to say, out loud, what their unsafe space is.
These are not isolated examples of good practice. They are evidence of what becomes possible when systems trust communities vice versa, invest in continuous capacity building, and treat health and wellbeing and education all holistically.
