Last month, our daughter Deborah had the opportunity to go to India. She and another teacher from the school she works for here in Belfast, Victoria College, took three students to visit a school in northern India and attend a gathering of educators from all over the world in Delhi.
The school she visited was for girls from under privileged homes. Apart from attending their classes, they attended assemblies each day where the girls performed traditional Indian dances that 
conveyed different aspects of the Indian culture.
On their visit to the educators assembly in Delhi, they were accompanied by two teachers and two students from the Indian school and performed a mixture of Indian and Irish dancing to symbolise the sharing of ideas and philosophy between the two schools. The trip was capped off with a trip to the Taj Mahal.
Some of the lasting impressions of the trip were 
shared by the students in assemblies when they returned to Belfast. In one video presentation they contrasted the the obvious poverty of the living conditions with the smiles that they had witnessed on the faces of their Indian counterparts. While students in India might be poor in pocket, they didn’t seem poor in heart.
Students in Belfast couldn’t be said to be poor in pocket but … poor in heart?