UWC Mahindra College monthly newsletter


Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Learning through extending our resources



In February 2011 on a campus roof top a small group of students gathered and started to plot; soon after, the Climb Committee was born. 

The committee emerged with an aim to begin to develop provisions and create opportunities for climbing to become part of a regular occurrence within the community. What was to follow was a series of meetings, a lot of discussion, some proposal writing, a search for donors, marketing bids, postal hiccups, presentations, administration errors, some more letter writing and some additional discussion. This approach was impelled by students taking responsibility for what they believed in, a process purely driven by passion. Working together and understanding their own strengths and weaknesses, the Climb Committee has this term started to climb on a regular basis, not only that but they have started to develop ways of extending these opportunities to the greater community.

Abhijit Singh who can be described as a driving force behind the Climb Committee, says:

“The Climb Committee is not just another rock climbing club. To me, it is a symbol of perseverance and dedication towards a goal. We thought that to build a climbing wall on campus would be a perfect way to challenge ourselves. The long summer break did slow us down, but we were determined to get the wall built. Once our 2nd year stared we sent many proposals to climbing cenres and organizations throughout the world and also to other UWCs. Often organizations and climbing halls did not want to  donate to a small school in the middle of nowhere in India, however we did not let those rejections  discourage . After several presentations and further discussions with instructors, clubs and administrators of various organisations we succeeded in getting enough donations for holds, equipment and funding. With the help of these donations, we were able to build a small yet functional bouldering wall on campus. Now that the wall has been built we have been able to start inviting others to climb and can now offer a service to other community engagement activities on campus, to use climbing as a means of physical challenge and engagement with the rst of the community. It is only a matter of finding your passion and working towards it that leads to great success. It is hard to believe that something that started out just as someone’s dream has turned out to be such a success. It has definitely shown me that dedication can lead one to achieve one’s goals.”

Tudor Etchells, another fundamental brain behind the project states:

“The donations have really made a change in our community, enabling climbing to flourish. We now have a fully functional bouldering wall. Along with this we have created a climbing club, aptly named ‘The Jugs’. Meeting twice a week we encourage and assist amateur climbers to develop their skills. Again, we cannot thank you enough for your continued support. We hope that you can sustain your support. It really is crucial to the existence to our project.”

The Climb Committee would like to take this opportunity in thanking Boulders Climbing Centre, Cardiff, UK for their donaton of climbing holds and equipment, UWC Atlantic College for donating holds, UWCUSA for their climbing hold donation, UWC of South East Asia for more holds and a special thank you to the Climbing Academy, Bristol who have supported a UWC climbing project for the second time, the first being Climb Swaziland in 2009. Their generous donation of climbing shoes has really gone a long way. We would also like to extend our gratitude to Ramesh Devmane and his team for constructing a bizarre overhanging plywood structure based on a series of ideas we came up with, and to Oliver Miska for his route setting abilities.
 
Although we have had tremendous success in the past 10 months, we will not stop here. Next as a committee we plan to explore more rock formations close to campus. If you have a pair of old rock shoes lying around that you wish to donate or you would like further information on our initiative, feel free to contact us: ahepworth@muwci.net And if you happen to visit our campus in the near future do come and have a climb on the campus wall!

Andrew Hepworh
UWC Mahindra College Outdoor Programme

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