The India I had never seen
Most of my earlier trips to India were to the biggest cities – Bangalore, Delhi etc. They were full of crowds, dust and traffic. It was my normal image of India: a poor, dirty, crowded, and very competitive place. A place where dogs and other animals roamed the streets starving, begging for food and where people sat in slums with rags on them. At least that’s what I first thought. This was my first journey into India’s villages and until now I had only seen photos and videos of what it was like. This time I was the one taking the pictures and videos as I experienced it myself, and I loved all of it!
My experiences at the Summer Camp
On the first day, we came and we needed to set up many things such as the computer, projector etc. After setting these up, batch-by-batch the children started coming, so we needed to set them in straight lines and make them sit in a row. We anticipated that there will be more Tamil than Oriya students, and we will be able to communicate easily. But, out of a 100 students, only 7 were Tamil, the rest 93 were Oriya or Hindi! This was a problem as we couldn’t communicate easily, but Bitika Aunty, talked to each of the children in Oriya and asked their names. For the first session of the morning we had nursery rhymes for all of the children. For example; Roly Poly, Skeleton Dance.
Books not bricks
These young migrant children wandered around the brick kilns, and were being exposed to serious safety hazards. Slowly, yet surely they were also being forced into child labor in the brick kilns. Tamil Nadu is a land of 3,000 brick kilns where 90% of the 300,000 workers are seasonal migrants from within and outside the state.
Schools as Multi-Dimensional Learning Space – Need
While the need to improve quality of education at Government Schools seems intuitive, I still think it would be good to see some numbers to make the point. Intuition can sometimes be inaccurate and looking at the right statistics and figures numbers are important to ascertain intuitions. As you read this, you will come to realize (if you haven’t already), the magnitude of the problem and the underlying issues that I feel are the core reasons why on quality of education is important.
Schools as Multi-Dimensional Learning Space – Genesis
I am pretty excited to start this series of blogs on one of the most interesting projects of my life. This is a project that focusses on improving quality of learning in Government schools especially in rural India. The goal of this project is to create a model that is replicable, holistic, low cost and easy to implement. Through these articles, I will articulate what we attempted to do, our collective learning and my own experiences. While the blogs are being written by me, I am documenting our collective learnings as a team. The success of the project is because of the team working behind it and not one person. Personally, its been a enriching experience to work along with such a dedicated and passionate team.
2016 Events
An Evening for Literacy - ILP Annual Dinner, Oct 15,2016 "An Evening for Literacy" - ILP Annual Dinner on Saturday, Oct 15th, 2016 at 5.30PM, at Crown Plaza Palo Alto, US ILP Partners Meet