WINTERLINE 1.0 – WOODSTOCK SCHOOL
In the beginning, nearly all support focused on Woodstock School, an international school with a history stretching back to 1854, located in the Himalayan Mountains of northern India. Many involved in Winterline ‘s leadership spent their formative years there. We believed that Woodstock School was, and continues to be, a sparkling example of how to engender in young people a genuinely transnational outlook.
Primary grants to Woodstock aimed to improve staff recruitment, retention, and professional development. We supported a modest Scholars-In-Residence program, aided in the acquisition of the Mt. Hermon building, and made some smaller grants focusing mostly on student activities.
WINTERLINE 1.1 – MGVS KAPLANI SCHOOL
In 2002 we made a multi-year grant to MGVS, a local Indian NGO, to help with operating costs of Kaplani Middle School. The school had just been started at the request of the inhabitants of Kaplani, a mountain community where grade school children from the surrounding valleys had no other educational options. The village had contributed land and labor, and MGVS had contributed building materials, but how to sustain operations was unclear.
Our first grant combined basic support with a promise to match outside contributions. Building on this foundation the school has expanded to include a high school.
We also maintain a restricted fund into which contributions designated for the Kaplani Program go, and from which our operational grants are made. We actively solicit contributions to this Fund.
Gifts from generous donors have helped the school move from its three original makeshift rooms into a permanent school building named the Heidi Parker Building. Additionally, the Mary Jane Folkers Memorial Endowment supports the inclusion of female instructors as part of the teaching staff.
WINTERLINE 1.2 – SAGE, INC.
From 2003 to 2005 Winterline supported the Colorado-based SAGE Program (Studies Abroad for Global Education) which sent U.S. high school students on what it described as “transformative educational experiences” ranging from three-week visits to year-long placement in international schools in a number of countries, including Woodstock School in India.
Winterline made several significant grants to allow the Program to hire its first full-time staff and begin building a permanent organizational identity.
WINTERLINE 2.0 – UTTARAKHAND
In 2006 we deliberately broadened our geographic area of interest to the entire mountain state of Uttarakhand. We made several grants that enabled unemployed youth from mountain villages in the remote Nanda Devi area to go through two years of training at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering in Uttarkashi, and become entrepreneurs in the local eco-tourism sector instead of mere porters. Later, we made a program-related investment in the Mountain Shepherds Initiative, a community-operated training and adventure institute that grew out of these grants.
About the same time, we began development of what was to become a series of educational booklets called the 5 Kilometer Classroom series. These booklets reflected on aspects of the flora, fauna, history, culture, and geology on display along a specific five kilometer walk in the vicinity of the local school. Aimed at local grade-school students, the booklets simultaneously educated and engendered appreciation for the local environment.
WINTERLINE 2.1 – AKSHARA
Though it took us far away from our default geographic focus, we seized a serendipitous opportunity to become involved with the Akshara Program, which is affiliated with the Mahindra United World College near Pune in Maharashtra, India.
The Program seeks to break a cycle of poverty in a small set of nearby villages by providing comprehensive educational and emotional support to village children, and mentoring each participant through to an initial professional or vocational placement, tailored to the individual in question. It has shown enormous success.
Our engagement with the Akshara Program was modeled on our Kaplani-MGVS engagement, with a restricted fund for which we actively sought support from a small set of individuals who expressed specific interest in the Program. By 2019, the Program had become so integrally embedded witin the MUWCI program that our supporting role was no longer critical to its survival, and was brought to a gratifying close.
WINTERLINE 2.2 – STILL AT WOODSTOCK
Our engagement with Woodstock School continued. We supported a series of International Writers Festivals. Other grants involved support of Jazz Band and Choir Tours and a solar heating unit capability for the Hostel pool.
WINTERLINE 2.3 – PRABHAT
In 2014 we added the activity of the Prabhat Educational Foundation in Gujarat, India, to our set of extended engagements. The organization, led by the son of our former colleague Ashoke Chatterjee, runs a cutting edge set of programs targeting special-needs children and families around Ahmedabad.
WINTERLINE / TIMBERLINE 2.4 – A SPINOFF, A SCHOLARSHIP, AND A NEW NAME
More than a year of brainstorming about our shared interest in global citizenship led to the establishment of The Winterline Global Skills Program as an independent but philosophically-aligned entity. As a change in our name to avoid confusion between the two – from Winterline to Timberline – matured. we stepped into another new venture by helping design and agreeing to host and administer the Chopra Bakshi Scholarship at Woodstock School.
TIMBERLINE 3.0 – FOCUS ON COMMUNITY CONSENSUS PROGRAMS
In the fall of 2015, We made a commitment to focus in the near and mid-term on the three programs – Kaplani, Akshara, and Prabhat – whose similarities had led us to dub them our “community consensus programs.” We used the term to describe the mutual sense of purpose that arose when the initially casual interest of acquaintances, friends and others coalesced into a community of donors finding value in these specific engagements.
As noted above the Akshara engagement was brought to a conclusion in 2019, but the others continue.