CHILDREN at The Mead Community Primary School were visited by a teacher from Tibetan Children’s Village Schools this week, after donating hundreds of books to disadvantaged children in India.

The Mead and Castle Mead schools have donated 850 books, including messages from pupils, to Tibetan orphans and refugee children living in exile in India through the charity Earthchild.

Earthchild, which was founded by Geoffrey and Alexander Dart in 2007, works with Tibetan Children's Village Schools as part of its mission to improve education for refugees, orphans and other poverty-stricken children.

As a result of the charity’s work, Tenzin Pelmo, TCV School’s English resource teacher, visited The Mead on Wednesday and Thursday to observe modern teaching practice and talk to pupils about the children living in Tibetan settlements in India.

Sam Phillips, Reading Recovery Teacher at The Mead, said: “We were first contacted by Earthchild to see if we would be interested in donating books, so we had an assembly about the Tibetan Village Schools.

“We spoke to pupils about the children in India and how fortunate we are in comparison. We also showed them pictures of the schools and their libraries, so they could see what their life was like.

“We had a huge response from the children and many of them wrote little messages in the books to say why they chose it. We hope to be able to continue to build on this link in the future.”

Organising visits by Tibetan teachers to schools in the UK so they can understand modern teaching methods is one of the ways Earthchild helps some of the 17,000 children living in Tibetan settlements in India.

Tenzin said: “It’s been very interesting to see the way they teach and the facilities they have here for the children. It is amazing and beyond my imagination and I told the children to make the most of it.

“We have a very small library, but we are hoping to be able to increase the number of books in our libraries and the homes of the children with the help of Earthchild and schools like The Mead.

“Earthchild have been very helpful to us collecting the books from these schools and it’s a great way for the children to see what a difference they are making by helping our kids.”