Santa Cruz Sentinel, 3/30/2017, Photo of the Day by Shmuel Thaler.
Bella Bettencourt, of Aptos, right, enjoys a moment with Pardada Pardadi Educational Society eleventh-grader Jassi Sejwal as Bettencourt and her Mount Madonna School classmates visit the school in Anupshahr, India during a learning journey as part of Mount Madonna’s Values in World Thought program. Pardada Pardadi is a girls empowerment program that provides a free education to nearly 1,300 students in a poor rural area a few hours outside of New Delhi where girls have traditionally been denied an education and expected to marry by age 15. The Mount Madonna senior class is on a two-week adventure in India that also includes visits to Sri Ram Ashram and orphanage near Haridwar, the Golden Temple in Amritsar and the Tibetan Nuns Project in Dharamsala.