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vidya18
Viswa
Bharti Vidyodaya Trust
No. 18
September 2007
Children's
savings programme: This programme is going ahead much faster
than anticipated. (To read more about this click here.) There is an interesting incident
that happened in Manalkolly village. Mohan, a 12 year old Bettakurumba
boy, saw that one of his friends in the village had got a savings box
from the AMS. Intrigued by what this was going to be used for, he spent
a lot of time finding out what the whole savings programme was about.
Once he fully understood it, he decided it was a good idea, and asked
for one of the wooden boxes to start saving. Unfortunately there were
none in stock at the time, and so Madan (the education
coordinator) promised to get him one as soon as more were made. After
that
none of us heard from Mohan for quite a while. Until suddenly he lands
up at the area office with a plastic bag filled with coins that he
wanted deposited in his account. He had decided not to wait for more
boxes to be made, but went ahead and bought himself a plastic bag and
started using it as a piggy bank. In just over a month he had collected
250 rupees!
This may not seem like a large sum to many of us, but for families
surviving on minimum wages, for a child to be able to save so much is
quite amazing.
Tailoring
training: The tailoring classes that were being held as a part
of the vocational training programme has taken an interesting new turn.
When it started, a group of Kattunaiaken girls from the Devala area had
enrolled themselves for the training after a lot of uncertainity. These
girls had hardly ever been out of the village, and even coming to
the Devala town for classes was a huge adventure. They have now
finished the course and are completely changed. So much so, that
they now want to start a tailoring training center for Adivasis! Since
they cant really move to Gudalur town for work, and there is not enough
work for all of them to be employed in Devala, they want to
teach others, and make clothes for all the Adivasis in the area.
 Cricket
Match: The Learning Center children (8th standard)
organised a cricket match with Morning Star School. This was not
through any of the official channels, and none of us teachers knew
about it till a few days before the match. It all happened unofficially
through kids from both schools who travelled on the bus together.
Their problem was that they
did not have 11 of them to make a team in learning center 1- so they
went down to the
lower classes and had to go all the way till Group 2 (3rd Standard)
before they had 11 players! Taking the small kids off on something like
this they felt would not go down well with school, and so decided to
keep it a secret. They managed to some extent, but in the end the word
got around, and one teacher went with them just to make sure everything
went off OK. The sad part was that the weather was a bit of a
spoilsport and it was drizzling all the time, and not all the players
from Morning Star showed up. They still played a match with whatever
they had, and Vidyodaya won the best of 3 series 2-0 with one match
rained out.
Parent's meeting: We had our
parent-teacher meeting for the term last month. The turn out was not as
good as we had hoped, but we still had some good discussions. Parents
all went through the student's files and spoke to some of the
teachers about progress of their children. Some of the topics for
discussion were :
- Review
of
the transport situation (click here
to read more) - There were a few issues about some parents not paying
the fees for transport
as regularly as others. Parents who had 3 children found it a
little difficult to pay Rs. 80 for each child. The consensus was that
this should be taken up by the parents involved with the jeep and
should be sorted out at the area level. The feeling was that people
with 3 kids should be given a concession.
- Evening
classes
for Learning center one - Since this group have their exams
coming in just over a month we felt they should also stay a little
late after school everyday for extra classes. All the parents were OK
with this idea, but some of them were a little worried about how the
children from Chembakolli would get back in the evenings since the last
bus is at 5.15 in the evening. After that, there is a 7 o clock which
stops 6kms away from the village, which would involve a long walk
through an elephant infested part of the forest. The kids remark that
the elephants seem angry all the time nowadays and therefore prone to
aggression. It was decided that they would leave on
most days at
about 4.45, but stay over with their friends in Gudalur from time to
time so they could work harder.
- Saturday
classes
and their relevance - This was an issue that first came up in
our teacher's meeting. Everyone felt that with us having school
almost every Saturday, many of the children were missing out on a lot
of
things they could learn from their parents. We felt that we were not
giving enough importance to the traditional Adivasi knowledge with all
our emphasis on the children doing well in school and exams. While all
the world seems to value and recognise the fact that Adivasis are the
only communities that have a sustainable way of life that is at peace
with nature, we don't seem to value it enough with most of our focus on
formal education. The parents seemed to recognise the fact that
their children were losing many of their adivasi values, but what
exactly could be done to change this, no one was sure. While almost all
the parents
agreed that they should spend more time with their children in the
forests so that they could pass on some of their wisdom, most of them
had to work on Saturdays especially since it was the day they were paid
their weekly wages. So no firm decisions were reached. We now
plan to formalise the process of learning from their parents,
so that there is conscious effort on the part of the kids to spend time
with their parents and learn things. We could possibly tell them about
things they have to find out about and present to the rest of the class
the following week. Even if we do have school on Saturdays, the focus
will be on non-formal education. Like watching movies, computer
sessions or interacting with some of the older adivasi leaders and so
on.
Dental check up: Mahantu, one
of the dentists at the Gudalur Adivasi
Hospital, spent the 19th in school conducting a dental
check-up. Rather than getting all the children to the hospital in
batches we felt it would be simpler to have the the dentist come over
to the school. The dental camp started with a short movie on
dental hygiene for children. Though it was not made for rural Indian
audiences,
it still served as a good ice breaker to get the kids started. A very
interesting observation that Mahantu made was that most of the kids
from the interior villages who still used their fingers with charcoal
and salt to clean
their teeth had much healthier teeth than the kids around Gudalur town
who had moved to tooth paste and tooth brushes! The kids enjoyed
themselves that day
as while one group was getting their teeth checked all the others got
to
watch a movie. So everyone enjoyed a filmfest for most of the day,
with a short break in between to get their teeth checked!
Support received: We express our
gratitude to Manfred Christ, Geetha Unnikrishnan and the Trust for
Human and Community Development for their generous contributions in the
month of September.
Children's
news:
- In Seetha's neighbour's
house a tree fell and broke the house.
- A leopard came to catch
the dog from Manikandan's house.
- A thief stole the
utensils from Anand's neighbour's house.
- There is a new cow in
Viji's house.
- A snake came into
Anand's house.
- A peacock came
close to Ramesh's house.
(Please dont miss the
all-in-one drawing!)
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All donations to the
Trust
are
exempt under Section 80G(5)(vi) ITAct.
The Trust also has permission
to receive Foreign funds No. 0759011.
Address : Post Box No. 28, Gudalur-643 212,
Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu,
Tel
No : 91-4262-261927
Email
: vbvtgudalur@gmail.com
Website
: www.vidyodaya.org
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