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Lee meets with Ganesh Sharma in Mumbai.
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In February, 2007, Lee Havis held a series of meetings in Mumbai and Bangalore, India to discuss the Character Teaching (CT) project in that country. In Bangalore, he met with K.R. Dharmadhikary (Lok Sevak Sangh, New Delhi) and Indrani Roy and Smita Kalappa of Smile Foundation. In Mumbai, Lee met with Ganesh Sharma and other members of the board of Yash Creative Education Trust (Ahmednagar, Maharashtra). (see photo) |
In 2007, I also conducted an evaluation visit to accredit the GEAR Montessori Teacher Training Institute in Bangalore.  In the picture, I’m shown consulting at their school program for children. This IMAC accrediting team visit gave me an opportunity to learn about Montessori teaching in India, as I was able to visit and observe a number of different Montessori schools.
|  | At the GEAR Institute, we were also able to capture an amazing video of children acting in a spontaneous “true natural” manner to take turns in working with the Pink Tower. This was taken in one of their classrooms for about 40 2-6 year old children |
In 2009, Sudev Suchan, CT board member in Karnataka state (Bangalore), met with the governor of his state to explain the CT project and request his official support. The governor expressed his pleasure about the project and asked Sudev to meet with his staff to provide details. In Calcutta, West Bengal, Sakyajit Banerjee joined the CT consultation board. Sakyajit is on the staff of Daffodil Buds Montessori school in Calcutta. In Maharastra, Vishwas Bomsvah joined the board. Vishwas is director of a school in Nagpun, Maharastra.
Since 2009, IMS has affiliated a number of new recognized schools in India, especially in the southern region around Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It is hoped that working together, the various school owners can generate enough interest in that region to allow IMS to conduct its two-day training workshop there, which would also be a good opportunity to explore development of the CT project in this area which still has quite a large population of poor working children and families.