Smiling Schools—reading letters from students in Spain

Cultural exchange and learning about other parts of the world are becoming increasingly important in our globalised world. This is also reflecting in education; today many schools have exchange programmes wherein their students visit other countries and they host visiting students from other countries as well. Mumbai Smiles also has an exciting programme to enable cultural exchange between our students and students from Spain—the Smiling Schools. The students mostly communicate through letters—both digital and physical.

One of the special events in the Smiling Schools project is the letter-reading and writing activity, where students in our Mumbai schools read letters from their Spanish counterparts. It is wonderful to see how much the students look forward to receiving the letters. Recently, we held such an event at St. Rocks School. The students read their individual letters and wrote their replies, which were collected and sent off to Spain. This exchange helps to broaden the outlook and exposure of the students and to help them forge connections with their peers in the wider world.