When I went to India in 2006, I had my heart set on helping out in a poor village where Bermudian Diane Kirwin had set up the charity Privilege-Sharing Bodhgaya.

I'd heard about it from friends who had been. They had helped hand out medical supplies and sweaters.

I figured I could go and perhaps teach. I love children and surely they'd take to me – all children worth their salt do.

But when I e-mailed Diane she explained I'd be too far away, she wouldn't be in the country and it simply wouldn't work out. I shrugged it off and told myself "next time".

Next time came earlier this year and everything was lining up perfectly. Diane would be in India and the town she was in was on my itinerary anyway. How lucky I was to be going both to the Holy Ganges River and to Bodhgaya – where the Buddha found enlightenment.

I learned that Diane was in fact operating a small school for local children. Bodhgaya is in Bihar, India's poorest state. Knowing this I thought there might be something I could bring that they would really value.

But what? When I was in South India several years ago, a child once ran up to me and asked: "Please madam, can you give me a pen?" I was crestfallen that I didn't have one.

Imagine a child only asking for an implement to help it learn.

I thought maybe I could take some pens and pencils to Bodhgaya, but surely these exist in India? Maybe it would be best for me to buy some there, further boosting that economy?

I asked Diane if there was anything I could bring the children, leaving it open to learn of their needs. To my surprise she said pens.

"Really? Pens?" I said. "How many children are there?"

She said 120 children were enrolled in the school although not all attended every day.

I thought I'd ask The Royal Gazette Ltd. manager for a discount, and buy a few boxes of Bic pens. But then I thought how so many local companies have pens that are so much more fun.

Capital G had given me a pretty pink one when they botched up my CD renewal; Bermuda Pest Control had a neat one with a tape measure, but why would these children need a tape measure?

And I didn't think that giving them pens that said 'pest control' was fitting either.

I like the Bermuda Hospitals Board pens but again not exactly fitting.

"What would be?" I wondered. Then I had an 'aha' moment – if my school gave pens to the little school in Bodhgaya that would make so much sense. So I called the Warwick Academy development director Jane Vickers and she agreed immediately. The next day I picked up my 120 gifts.

Royal Gazette librarian Deborah Charles learned of my project and donated about 60 pens from her seminar/convention collection.

Suitcase packed with pens, I was set for Bodhgaya, or so I thought. Unfortunately the town was not the first on my itinerary. I was travelling with my 75-year-old mother who took quite ill in Varanasi. It was dusty at the Ganges River at that time of year. My mother, an immaculately clean woman, thinks the dirty air was a major culprit in the demise of her gastrointestinal fortitude. She became weak and her face became gaunt.

It was a five-hour trip to Bodhgaya by car and she begged me to forgo the journey. I agreed, but after an extended stay in Varanasi she began to look better.

We rescheduled the trip – I had all these pens I had to deliver. My mother didn't understand it. She said it was ridiculous and I should give the pens to any school in India. But when we finally reached our destination, she got it.

A few hours after we arrived in Bodhgaya, Diane came to the hotel and off we went to the school. It was scorchingly hot. The physical school was being constructed, so the children were being taught in the shade of trees – out in the open.

There were two classes, with children ranging in age from about five years old to 11 years old. Through an interpreter I explained that my school in Bermuda had sent the pens to them.

The children were excited, but even more excited was Diane. Her late husband David was a longtime teacher at Warwick Academy and the person Diane has named the Bodhgaya school after.

However at the time I had no idea of this, and she had no idea – until I was explaining to the children – that the pens had come from Warwick Academy.

Warwick Academy had expressed an interest in keeping in touch with the children in Bodhgaya.

Ms Kirwin said unfortunately the language barrier would make it very difficult. Most children speak Hindi but few can read or write it.

"Parents of our students are very happy that their children are going to school," said Sanjay Mishra, a director of Kirwin International Relief Foundation, the organisation that operates the school.

"These parents never had such an opportunity and really never dreamed it would be possible for their children," he added. "The work we are doing in educating them is so important."

For more information on Kirwin International Relief Fund, the work being done with the school and other projects in Bodgaya visit www.kirfindia.org.