Tuesday, September 2, 2008

It's hard being a Pratham Coordinator - Part II

This is in continutation to Pushkar's previous post, here.

In Orissa, we (Pia and I) heard of how one Block Coordinator was abducted by the Naxalites. The reason? No, it wasn't that they were against Pratham's work (they are apparently only anti-state), they were simply very impressed with the coordinator's ability to convince and mobilize the villagers. And they decided to show their appreciation by abducting him and making him work for them. The coordinator stayed with them for some 2-3 days, and could make an escape only when they were transporting him somwhere, and made a stop to eat. He ran, and ran until he was a distance away and could flag a ride to safety.

In Punjab, I was told about how one mobilizer was assured by a girl of her participation as a volunteer over the phone. He called her up to fix up some details, and finally before the commencement of the Summer Camp training he reached her house to pick her up. There, her father accosted him and accused him of eyeing his daughter. He took away the keys of his motorcycle, kept him confined in the house and along with his relatives questioned him as to why he had been calling his daughter so often, and marvelled at his gall to now come and meet his daughter in person. The girl had of course not told her parents about Pratham or her wish to be a volunteer. It took many a-call to the Block and District Coordinators (and some name dropping - "ask the District Education Officer, what Pratham is") for the father to be convinced that it wasn't all a large, spread-out lie to trap his innocent daughter, and for him to release the poor boy.
______________________________________________________
www.readindia.org
www.pratham.org.uk
www.prathamusa.org
www.pratham.org

The Naag Panchami incident and the Pratham legacy

You tend to run into adventures when you’re out there. We arrived at Bahtji village at about 6 o’ clock in the evening. The area was celebrating Naag Panchami by hanging temporary swings on trees, and with...alcohol. It was a fairly large village, and everyone’s eyes were trained on us as we entered in a car too big for those streets. Whose house were we going to, was the unsaid question on their lips. We were there to visit Manisha and Janabai Vakale, 2 of the 4 volunteers of the village. These girls were students of standard 12, and had taught the Anganwadi students in July-October 2007 and during the summer camp.

'Red India' the Pratham sign read at Bahtji


The modest house was filled to capacity by us; there were about 9 of us in about a room of 4 square metres. We were joined by the Upsarpanch of the village. Tea was served and I began to ask my questions about their experience with Pratham so far. As the girls began to speak, the Upsarpanch interrupted – “Excuje me Saar...”, and then he wouldn’t stop. The rest of the conversation was spent trying to keep him quiet.

He imagined that we were here to pay some money to the girls, without his permission or knowledge. And his drunken ego was not going to take that lying down. Here is what I caught of what he said – some intended for me in English, and to impress others – ‘I’m sorry’, ‘I’m a double MA from Baba Saheb Ambedkar University’, ‘ye mulgi’ (‘this girl’), ‘please keep quiet, I am talking’. The repeating refrain, though, was ‘excuse me sir, I’m sorry’.

Pandemonium ensued. People were arguing, shouting, mediating, and suppressing laughter. In all the confusion, the electricity went off. The village men were crowding in to the doorway, curious of us outsiders, blocking all sources of light.

After he attempted a scuffle with our state head (Vishwajit sir), someone led him away. The little interrogation we managed told us that the Panchayat wasn’t forthcoming, and Manisha and Janabai often found it difficult to convince the parents to send their children to the classes. Without the Panchayat’s support, the schools too weren’t supportive. Pratham wasn’t doing as well as it should have been doing, considering their achievements in neighbouring villages, and considering that there were 4 volunteers in the village.


Manisha and Janabai Vakale


Pratham Maharashtra puts large emphasis on creating awareness among villagers towards the cause of primary education. Vachan programmes are held regularly on a Sunday at a communal place, where the children are tested on their reading and mathematics in front of the parents. They are then taught by the volunteers. All this is in order for parent’s to see their child’s progress, whether it is in regular school or in the Pratham classes. Once the parent’s are aware of the situation, they are automatically involved. The Vachan programme brought together parents in large numbers initially, and now, even if the parents might not attend, they surely send their children.

If the Vachan programme doesn’t catch their attention immediately, the work of Pratham eventually does. Pratham makes itself known slowly and surely, everywhere I visited, by virtue of its commitment and achievement. The coordinators I spoke to at Aurangabad were full of stories of how the school principal first denied them even the verandah, later gave them a room right next to his own. Stories of how the village collected money to pay the volunteers as a thank-you, how the volunteers were invited by neighbouring villages to teach. How panchayats, parents and schools were waking up to the challenge awaiting them and extending their support to Pratham.

The Naag Panchami incident (as I like to call it) showed me how it would be if Pratham was working without this awareness and support of the village. And of course, it made me realise how important those things were.


In fact, almost everyone I met at Pratham Maharashtra realises that. Everyone at every level – right from Dr Gambhir of the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education who was working on the science material, to Vishwajit Sir, to Vijay Chauhan (the block coordinator for Bahtji) to the volunteers - held that one of the biggest achievements of the organisation (and not the most obvious one) was to create enthusiasm in the community about education.


And this environment that Pratham has created not only supports its work, but will outlast the Read India movement and will continue to bear fruit until much later. In fact, that is, I think, the Pratham legacy here.
________________________________________________
www.readindia.org
www.pratham.org.uk
www.prathamusa.org
www.pratham.org

Monday, September 1, 2008

Pratham Maharashtra and its women

Madhuri has been a volunteer for the English pilot programme in her village, Sulikhanjan near Aurangabad. Just out of school and with little familiarity with the language, the task of teaching 20 children must have been daunting. But Madhuri seems a determined girl. This isn’t the biggest adversity she has faced, and she knew she had to make something of her life, to support her family after her father’s passing away. With the help of the continuous training Pratham imparted, the handbook for instructors, and the amazing material (yes amazing, see photo below) provided by them, her job was simplified. It was set into a pattern of studying herself and then teaching what she just learnt.

An example of the English material provided by Pratham

Her students now boast of a repertoire of 350 words and 50-100 sentences. That is a big achievement when you begin from scratch, and teach for just a few days. And it is an even bigger achievement when the teacher herself begins from near scratch.

But these achievements of Madhuri are more important for the changes they have brought in her life. She has picked up the rudiments of English, and now wishes to learn further. She wishes to teach both English and Mathematics in the phase II of Read India. She has enrolled in the local college for a Bachelors degree. On the basis of her Pratham stint, she has got a job as a teacher at a local private school, the money from which is precious to her family’s subsistence. And she has discovered freedom; the mobility and respect that comes from being a teacher is new to a girl from these parts of the country. And it is treasured above everything else.


Madhuri at her home where she also runs the Pratham village library

All over the Maharashtrian countryside, Pratham is changing the lives of the women associated with it. They’re gaining skills, social mobility and greater meaning for themselves. And these women are changing Pratham too. Many of its coordinators and most of its volunteers are women. They are intelligent, outspoken and fiercely loyal. This symbiotic relationship between Pratham Maharashtra and its women is perhaps the most outstanding spin-off of this movement to educate children.

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www.readindia.org
www.pratham.org.uk
www.prathamusa.org
www.pratham.org

Sunday, August 17, 2008

In Himachal Pradesh the last camps of the nationwide Summer Camp program were running. When I found out a team from Delhi was going to Himachal Pradesh to assess the Summer Camps I decided to join them and see what had been happening in this part of the country. Walking in Himachal Pradesh feels like taking a stroll through a Hindi movie love scene. There were flowers everywhere, and trees heavy with fruit were rustling overhead. The humidity was low and it wasn’t too hot – a blessing after the stifling Delhi weather – and when the clouds came in they wrapped the mountainside in a thin layer of mist and it would drizzle lightly. The mountains rose steeply behind us, but a wide fertile valley opened in front, speckled with paddy fields and winding rivers. Two block coordinators Anuradha and Sangeeta were accompanying us and together we made a merry team, chatting and laughing as we walked.

On the road to one of the camps we paused for a lunch of Sangeeta’s home grown mangos. They were small and yellowish on the inside – but so sweet! Juice ran down our face and hands as we slurped the delicious mango. We were visiting a village built on a tongue of land between two rivers that flood during the monsoon months, making the village inaccessible. We sat eating our mangos on the ridge of the riverbank, overlooking a valley that looked as though it had been untouched for hundreds of years. The village was very picturesque; the buildings were painted in rustic shades of indigo and green and in the cool shade of the verandah were wicker baskets for grain storage. Majestic roosters strutted in the lanes and lines of colorful washing were strung between the trees.

The school was set slightly apart from the rest of the village, standing alone on a small raised area. One room of the school had been opened for the summer camp, and inside we found thirty little faces sitting in their ability groups. Four young volunteers were waiting expectantly for us. It was dark inside the classroom, and I noticed a heap of rubble in one corner. One of the volunteers was newly married, still wearing her bangles and with henna on her hands. She was a little nervous, showing us how she had been using the summer camp material and calling the children up to recite songs and poems for us. There was a wide range of ages and abilities in the classroom. I tested some of the children in the ‘nothing’ group – children who had started the summer camp unable to recognize letters and numbers – and noted that they were all able to read alphabets in Hindi and calculate simple addition and subtraction, although some of the children were so shy that their answers were hardly audible. Some of the older children enjoyed playing with the currency Pratham had prepared for the summer camp. Using notes of 1, 10, 100 and 1000 the children were able to play games while practicing their mental arithmetic skills.

After visiting the school, we went to the home of one of the volunteers for tea. The summer camps had clearly been received well in this village – children had maintained or improved on their learning levels, and the volunteers told us about a rally that they held with the children to cement community support and enthusiasm. Anuradha and Sangeeta had taken the camp children on a picnic – an enormous treat for the children and their families. As we sat and chatted, a few curious children were peeping out of the windows and the sides of the buidings. It started to rain. We all sat around together, sipping our tea and watching the rain.


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www.readindia.org
www.pratham.org.uk
www.prathamusa.org
www.pratham.org

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Back in Delhi

Recently, data collected by the East Delhi office showed that the area still has a large number of children (c.11,000) who attend neither government school, nor Pratham’s direct (community-based) program. I spent two days in the field finding and interviewing some of these children in order to understand more about their circumstances and see how Pratham can better target this elusive group.

Visiting those bastis is something I shall never forget. The lanes were dark, narrow and filthy with open gutters, flea-ridden animals and the insects swarmed so thickly they hung like a veil across my path. The overcrowding was intense: families of five to six lived in rooms so small that I could cross them in a single stride and the smell was overpowering. Today we visited a basti in which Pratham does not operate a direct program. We asked the children whether they knew of Pratham and asked them about their levels of education, if any. We visited during school hours in the hope of catching the non-attendees at a time when parents might be at work (and children more able to answer our questions freely). We spoke to three families. In each case, we found young girls of about twelve to fourteen years at home with infant siblings, of which there were normally two or three. All three girls had lost their mothers. They told us that their fathers and brothers (often of about the same age) were working in factories making plastic home-wares such as tea strainers, or ironing and pressing clothes, and pulling rickshaws. Two girls told us that their brothers were able to read and write, although none of them had studied beyond third standard.

We had anticipated that children might have been working instead of going to school. We also suspected that many out of school children would be migrants – and they were – but not quite in the way we had expected. Many migrant families came to Delhi from rural areas for work, sometimes children came to the cities alone. Furthermore, seasonal migration prevents children from finishing their school year in the same place that they started. Today we discovered a further nuance to the problem of migration: many families and especially newly arrived migrants were constantly on the move, changing room every couple of months. But if the family moved out of their school catchment area, then the child would have to move to a new school. The process of re-enrollment was highly problematic and often children would be shut out of the school system till the beginning of the next academic year. Another girl explained that she tried to enroll her young brother in first standard, but he was ill with tuberculosis during the enrollment period. In fact, he was still weak and not yet fully recovered, and she said she would try to enroll him again next year.

The children talked of other barriers to education: the associated costs of school (school uniform, birth certificates etc) were too high, and fears of allowing children to walk to and from school alone. However, there was strong support for a direct program and general desire to attend school was high. It was interesting for me to be able to see the thorough planning and data collection process, to view the questionnaire design and the uninhibited interaction of the Pratham staff with the community. Pratham’s interventions thrive on community support and public will to bring about change, especially in the face of government underprovision. I left the field feeling happy and optimistic that before even establishing a presence in the basti, Pratham’s staff were excellent ambassadors for the cause and had sewn the first seeds of a good future relationship with the people we met today


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www.readindia.org
www.pratham.org.uk
www.prathamusa.org
www.pratham.org

Saturday, August 9, 2008

There are two forces invading the Bihari countryside: Pratham, and Amul Macho Male Innerwear (crafted for fantasies, of course).




Most of my weekend was spent on a colossal commute across Bihar: from Patna to Bettiah. I clattered down an old and deeply pot-holed lane/main road for seven hours in each direction on a visit to the Read India evaluation site. Luckily, with my eclectic group of companions and Amul adverts, the time flew by. (Enter Rukmini Ma’am, leading the charge with Michael Walton, an extremely well traveled Englishman and professor at Harvard; Mark, the Garba aficionado, Adrien, the nearly Bhojpuri film star, and me, trying not to think about sudden death by oncoming traffic).



Business as usual: elephant and camel in near miss with large truck

Bihar is lush and fertile: we were flanked by lychee orchards, banana groves, watermelon, rice and wheat fields all the way to Bettiah. Everything was so green I needed sunglasses to look out the window. At the same time, the poverty is severe and institutionalized, and it was fascinating for me to spend fourteen hours in conversation with people who are helping Bihar move in strides towards development. While there had been no teacher recruitment in Bihar for fifteen years, in 2005 the state government recruited 85,000 new teachers and Pratham designed and implemented the teacher training program. A further 115,000 teachers have been recruited since.

Once in Bettiah, it was truly exciting to see this in action: the very purpose of our trip was to oversee a workshop that was training project monitors to measure the impact of Read India properly. Leading the training were three very impressive young women: Afsha, Heena and Paribhasha. They were feisty and bright, and I couldn’t help but smile at the way the three young women were confidently commanding the attention and respect of fifty men. This was another opportunity for me to marvel at the incredible people that Pratham attracts and grooms. I also found the training interesting for two reasons: firstly, I enjoyed learning about the project testing methods. I was curious to know how the impact of Read India could be measured and evaluated. Secondly, this was my first direct exposure to the research and development side of Pratham. Pratham has a rigorous system of evaluating its impact, both at the point of designing program content and (like today) in order to evaluate the success of a program . This seemed such efficient cycle: Pratham’s literacy programs teach children faster than ever because materials are built exclusively around material that children respond well to, as determined by continuous investigation.


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www.readindia.org
www.pratham.org.uk
www.prathamusa.org
www.pratham.org

Saturday, August 2, 2008

The world's best byriani

When I arrived in Hyderabad, the team, along with Kishor Sir from Mumbai and the PCVC (Pratham Council for Vulnerable Children) were designing a survey to estimate the number of children in ‘visible’ employment – shops and restaurants – in commercial areas of Hyderabad. The pilot would be relatively simple. We decided to head towards Charminar, the symbolic fortress in the middle of Hyderabad’s old city, and our task was to record the name of every fifth shop, and whether or not we could spot any children at work inside.






The adventure began in Parveen Ma’am’s home. Fragrant and light, her home made Byriani was cooked to perfection. We sat like a pack of lions around the pots of food and indulged.




Four servings of Byriani later, the team was raring to go. And we needed the sustenance. Charminar was brimming, bustling, bursting with traders, customers, onlookers, tourists, passers by, pedestrians, vendors, scooters, autos, cars, buses, cycles, cows, dogs, cats, dust, smells, food, litter – humanity in all its variety was out in force and in a hurry when we arrived to survey at Charminar (needless to say, I was looking both incongruous and clumsy trying to juggle an umbrella, clipboard and pen and stay with the group in the middle of all this). The team split at Charminar: one team took the route to Madina through the pearl shops, another went to Purana Pul, and my team took on Ladh Bazaar and the bangle markets (this was very considerately organised so that I could roll sightseeing, bangle shopping, and surveying into one exercise).






The market was dazzling. Thousands of shimmering bangles were rustling and twinkling on the stall racks in every kind of size and colour, every thickness and pattern. Yet I astounded myself by getting so engrossed in the survey work that I forgot to buy bangles. The action on the street was much more interesting. We discovered not so many children working inside the shops, but many of them mingling independently on the street, selling handkerchiefs, safety pins, string, shoelaces. The kids were like firecrackers: bright, uninhibited and feisty.

‘Are you going to school?’ Kishor Sir asked one young boy, Secunder.

‘No, but why should I go to school? I earn 200 rupees per day.’

Our young friend had a point. 200 rupees was indeed a lot of money, especially in the hands of a ten year old.

‘Do you know many children who do the same work as you?’

‘Oh yes, I know all the kids. There are around five hundred in this area and we all get our goods from Firoz Bhai.’

‘Firoz Bhai??’ We leaned in, clipboard at the ready, to hear what else Secunder was going to tell us.

‘Yes! Let me take you to him! You have to meet him.’

The next thing we know, Firoz Bhai is explaining that if we want to educate these children we have to ask them if they want to go, because he only sells goods to them, the children do not work for him. Secunder, meanwhile, is energetically assuring us that school is a good idea, and he will not only find a room for us to hold classes but that he will also round up all the children working in the area and get them to attend.

When we later retold this story to everyone over some fresh samosas at Sunita Ma’am’s house, we discovered the others had also had similar encounters. Together we had spotted over 200 children in the Charminar area. I left Hyderabad just as Kishor Sir and his team were rolling up their sleeves to find out more.


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www.readindia.org
www.pratham.org.uk
www.prathamusa.org
www.pratham.org

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Rafi Nagar Dump in Mumbai

To add to Pia's post below, here's a map of Rafi Nagar Dump in Mumbai:


View Larger Map


And here we're being shown around by the Pratham Ward Coordinator Dilshad Khan of the area. This is what it looks like and sounds like at the edge of the dump during the monsoon...



______________________________________________________
www.readindia.org
www.pratham.org.uk
www.prathamusa.org
www.pratham.org

...And they're off

After settling in for a couple of days in Delhi, Pushkar and I went to Mumbai for a whirlwind visit. We were in and out in two days. Mumbai seemed to be a logical place for me to start my journey, since it was here that the first Pratham initiatives were originally launched in 1994. We managed to see and do a lot in just two days, but one of the most compelling field visits we made was to the Mohammed Rafi Nagar school, situated on the edge of the Rafi Nagar Dumping Ground. This sprawling landfill site is the main destination for rubbish from all over the city of Mumbai and it is, accordingly, huge. Many of the children living near the dumping ground, venture into it for work. They are rag pickers, trawling through the mountains of trash for scraps of metal, plastic, cloth; rather worryingly some collect medical refuse (which shouldn’t even be there in the first place, but…)

Unsurprisingly, this is one of the toughest areas of Mumbai. The school (the only one in the area) is in poor condition - large puddles yawned across the classroom floors and the walls, once beautifully painted with jungle and farm scenes, were faded and crumbling. Flies swarmed.


[Flies in a school window]

On account of the rain many teachers had not come in that day. Unsupervised pupils were running through the corridor and in and out of the classrooms. In the middle of this, a young Pratham CCP (Community Contact Person) was teaching the Urdu alphabet to a small group of children.


[Teaching Urdu with a magnetic board]

The children were rapt, loudly repeating after the volunteer as she held brightly colored alphabet magnets up against a white board. She was laughing and smiling, encouraging the children to ask questions and match up the magnets with the characters on their reading cards.


Later when we were chatting with her, I was fascinated to hear about the enormous impact Pratham had on her life. It was hard to imagine that the fiery and energetic girl before us had once been too shy to venture into the local market alone. She had passed most of her life in the house and she had never thought about working before Pratham offered her the opportunity. Today, she travels alone on the bus to attend meetings, she socializes independently of her family, and co-ordinates with parents in her local area to make sure attendance rates at school improve. She has decided to work for a few years before getting married, and has convinced her younger sister to study beyond 12th Standard. I started to think about the thousands upon thousands of volunteers all over the country that have been mobilized by Pratham. I wondered: how many other inspirational stories remain untold elsewhere?


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www.readindia.org
www.pratham.org.uk
www.prathamusa.org
www.pratham.org

Monday, July 28, 2008

Introducing Pia Gadkari & Shagun Khare

As my summer travels wind down here in India, I write to introduce you all to Pia Gadkari of Pratham UK and Pratham-ite Shagun Khare who will start blogging for our Pratham blog "Every Child in School and Learning Well."

Pia finished a BA in History from Oxford and has been very involved in fund-raising for Pratham in the UK-- but I'll let her introduce herself fully. (If you're interested you can find pictures of Pia participating in a 10k run in order to raise money for Pratham UK at www.pratham.org.uk. I'd give you the direct link, but I think Pia would hit me if I shared those pictures...)

Shagun finished with a BA in Economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce at Delhi University and is currently enrolled in a Masters program in Quantitative Economics that has her studying all across Europe. In between studying in Germany and Spain she has come back to India for her summer break, and has generously offered to spend it with Pratham documenting the Read India movement. But I'll let her fill in the rest of the details...

______________________________________________________
www.readindia.org
www.pratham.org.uk
www.prathamusa.org
www.pratham.org

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Updated Map

Where has Pushkar been since June 6, 2008?

Here:


View Larger Map

______________________________________________________
www.pratham.org
www.readindia.org
www.prathamusa.org

Nagaland (continued)

(http://inschoolandlearningwell.blogspot.com/2008/07/nagaland.html)
CONTINUED...


After waiting for about 10 minutes I got a little bit antsy. In the distance I noticed there was one shop still open from where I could pay to call Honang. With my companion still complaining loudly about just waiting for Honang I set off towards the shop. This subdued the still unnamed man in black who followed me.

“Do you see him?” he asked.

I kept walking. From the phone booth I dialed Honang’s number. Ring, ring—beep, beep, beep. The number was busy.

I hung up frustrated, looked around, but still no Honang in sight. I saw lightning flash off in the distance.

“What happened?” He asked.

“It was busy,” I said. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

After a minute of tense silence, I spoke, “How much would it be for you to take an autorickshaw from here to your home.”

“Ehhh… 20-30 Rupees.”

“That’s all?” I thought to myself. I then realized how tight our man’s finances must have been. “Ok, no problem. I’ll pay for it.” This diffused his tension quite a bit, but with a storm brewing in the distance and shady looking men on their Honda Heroes who were becoming more and more curious about our presence, I turned around to try Honang on the payphone again, but found the shop closing.



[A Honda Hero]


The phone was my golden ticket to get me off these Dimapur streets and away from the clutches of John Carpenter's boogey-men floating around in my imagination; I knew I’d have to reach Honang to get out of this situation.

“Sir, I really need to use the phone to call my friend.”

“Just wait, he’ll come meet you soon, I’m sure.”

“No sir, he was supposed to meet me 15 minutes ago (an exaggeration) and I’m not sure where he is.”

“Where are you from?” he asked me.

“Delhi,” I said, trying not to draw any extra attention to myself.

He looked at me for a minute, maybe trying to place my accent. He looked out at the empty streets. And in a moment of generosity (or was it pity?) he took out his own mobile and said “Oh, ok. What is the number?”

I gave the shopkeeper the number and he called Honang. The shopkeeper told Honang where we were (Honang had been waiting at the Stadium; I had gotten impatient and left before he arrived) and a few minutes later he pulled up in front of the shop.

I thanked the shopkeeper for his help and greeted Honang. Honang looked at the man in black, confused. I explained he was a friend and flagged down an autorickshaw. While the man with no name had said the auto ride would only be about 30 Rs., the auto driver said it would be 100 Rs. for the trip.

I thought the man in black might have smoothly baited me into agreeing to pay for his (expensive) ride home, but quickly realized that he had probably never taken an auto home from here and did not know what the cost would be.

So I paid the auto driver and the short man in black jumped into the back seat, smiling for the first time that night. “Thank you, I hope we’ll meet again,” he said.

“Yes, me too… though next time I hope it’ll be during the day.”

The auto took off and I jumped in Honang’s car-- finally safe from barking dogs, shifty-eyed Honda heroes, and my own imagination.

______________________________________________________
www.pratham.org
www.readindia.org
www.prathamusa.org

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Nagaland

Written July 6th

After 7 wonderfully productive (and enjoyable) days in Assam, I was very sad to say goodbye to the first-class staff of Pratham Assam. This morning the State Coordinator, Ashok and I, drove from the heavy tea-growing city of Dibrugarh to the smaller town of Golaghat. In Golaghat he put me on a bus to Dimapur, Nagaland where I would begin a short stay visiting Pratham programs there.

On the 2-hour bus ride I remembered some of the things I had heard about Dimapur. Though it was the business center of Nagaland, it was also supposed to be a pretty forgettable town. Ashok had also mentioned that the town would close at dusk and that I shouldn’t go out alone in the city at night.

When I asked him why not, he told me that after dark there were only drugs, prostitutes, and crime in the streets. I told him that I’d seen too many kids summer camps in Assam and that I wouldn’t mind visiting an “adult summer camp” at night in Dimapur.
He didn’t think that was funny.

In the back row of a rusting, rickety bus, I stared out onto the green fields of Assam. After about half an hour the sun began to set and I realized that I’d arrive in Dimapur after dark.

My mind drifted and I imagined the worst Dimapur might look like at night—dogs howling in the empty streets, all homes and shops shut, while roving bands of prostitutes partied with drug dealers, all to the sounds of vandals smashing cars and lighting trash cans on fire—well, maybe this was a little extreme. I mean this was India not John Carpenter’s Escape from New York (plus there aren’t any trash cans in India…). Debating these thoughts in my head, I soon fell asleep.


[The poster from John Carpenter’s 1971 Escape from New York]

Before leaving me on the bus, Ashok had found a man on the bus that was also going to Dimapur. He introduced me to this Hindi-speaking stranger (in his late twenties, short and dressed in all black) and told me to go with him once I reached Dimapur. An hour later I awoke and noticed we were arriving at the Nagaland border (Dimapur is a border town).

The bus came to a stop and I grabbed my bags. I stepped down onto the side of a dark dusty road that was eerily quiet. I found the man in black Ashok had spoken to waiting impatiently for me. We made eye contact and he briskly started walking away. I jogged to catch up with him and after a couple of questions discovered that the bus did not go directly to Dimapur, but stopped outside the town. I asked the man with no name if he had a mobile phone (because mine wasn’t working… http://inschoolandlearningwell.blogspot.com/2008/06/airtel-nowhere.html) and he tersely replied, “no.” The man in black moved quickly forward, taking the longest strides a short man could. I followed him towards Dimapur town, while keeping my eyes out for trouble.

15 minutes later we came upon a phone booth and I called Honang, a friend and Pratham ASER Associate, who I would be staying with. We agreed to meet at a football pitch on the outskirts of town. I hung up the phone and continued walking with my impatient companion.

We reached the unlit football pitch, and stood outside waiting for Honang. All the shops were closed by this point and the only life on the streets were irritated street dogs looking for a meal and a couple of small groups of men sitting on motorcycles smoking cigarettes, laughing quietly to themselves. A traveler with bags alone with an impatient, short man, I stuck out like a Punjabi in Nagaland (which I was).

“Where is your friend?” asked the stranger in black, I’d met only minutes ago—who was now my only crutch. “I can’t wait here, I have to move.”

“Where are you going?” I asked, trying to stall.

“I live Far away, I’ll reach by 1am.”

“How will you get there.”

He patted his legs, “walking.”

I contemplated a 4-hour walk in these rough conditions and noticed that the motorcycle crew was eyeing me eagerly… I clutched my bags tight, and looked off into the distance for Honang.

TO BE CONTINUED...

______________________________________________________
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The Best Summer Camp in India…at least in my opinion

Written July 3, 2008

Today I saw, without a doubt, the most exciting summer camp in all my travels.

In a village called Morhisha in the major tea-producing District of Dibrugarh, Assam Abhijit, Surjya, Ashok, and I arrived at a school where we saw a large group of children playing in the courtyard. As we approached the children ran inside—it seemed like they did not want us to know they were playing.

This was just the first clue that something unique was going on. After introducing ourselves as the sponsors of the summer camp—and not some rigid government officials, the children went out into the courtyard again. Within moments about 90 children had created a large circle on the veranda, and became spectators for a performance. Without any coaching from the volunteers who ran the camp, 2 boys jumped center stage and began to perform a scene from one of the Pratham picture story cards.

Moments later 3 other boys jumped onto the stage and performed another scene



And after that 2 girls performed a well-rehearsed bharatnatyam dance.



And after that a girl stood up and sang a song… then another girl recited a poem…

I had seen students recite poems and songs in summer camps and classrooms before, but I always felt like those students were being put on display to impress us. What was different here was the way the students themselves were engaging their own creativity and expressing themselves for the pure enjoyment of it. And the enormous class size (again about 90) demonstrated that the students loved it.

One of Pratham’s main objectives of holding summer camps has been to create a lively, fun atmosphere where students would enjoy themselves (in turn generating strong attendance from children) while they developed their reading, writing, and math skills. In all my travels—from Punjab to Gujarat to here—this camp was the first one to unquestionably reach this goal, and it was only 3 days into the one-month long summer camp.


[Kids in the Morhisha summer camp]

After spending almost 45 minutes with the children, I wanted to see who was responsible for this wonderful work. So I introduced myself to Padma Das, a petite and gregarious woman in her early-forties, with 2 children attending the camp. I asked her how many volunteers there were, and she introduced me to 4 other women.



[The Morhisha summer camp volunteers with Ashok, Abhijit, me, and Surjya]

Padma said that they were long-time friends who all had grown up in Morhisha and were looking for a way to boost education in the community. “When we met the Pratham Block Coordinator at a Gram Sabha meeting, we liked the idea of a summer camp,” she said. “When we found out that the local government education officer was not going to open up the school for the summer camp, we went to his office and convinced him to allow us to use these grounds.”

A child walked by and showed Surjya a color drawing he had made. Surjya commended the child on his picture, and Padma told me that the following week a professional visual artist would be coming in to teach the children to draw.



[Kids in the Morhisha summer camp drawing]


At that point I asked, "Why are you running the summer camp?" and Padma replied, "Because we love our children and they need it. And even if Pratham doesn't help us, we'll do it again next summer-- no one can stop us."




______________________________________________________
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Friday, July 4, 2008

Flooding in Guwahati

The following video clip depicts the results of heavy rains in Guwahati in early July 2008. While in many areas Guwahati has very deep gutter-systems in place to swallow these rains, these gutters often fill up with rainwater which then carries the sewage in the gutters into the streets.

In order to document this unsanitary flooding for you, the blog-reading public, I ventured out into the flooded streets to have lunch at a cafe close to the Pratham office in Guwahati.

What follows is a brief video documentation of my trip to and from said cafe.

Video Breakdown:
-Leaving the office (against the suggestions of my colleagues)
-Walking to the cafe (with my colleagues watching from above)
-Watching life underwater on R.G. Baruah Road, from the dry island of the cafe
-My favorite part of the clip: 1 minute 10 seconds in
-Returning back to the office (a little smarter this time)


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Wednesday, July 2, 2008

It’s Hard Out Here to Be a Pratham Coordinator

Four of us left Guwahati last night for 2 Districts in eastern Assam, Golaghat and Dibrugarh. Ashok (the well-educated, Pratham veteran, now State Coordinator), Abhijit (the deeply focused, former-student activist), Surjya (Abhijit’s young, thoughtful, smiley sidekick), and me (the clueless Indian-American with a camera) rode together with our pleasant, musician-in-his-heart-but-currently-employed-as-a-driver, Rabha.

Though I thought I would just fall asleep on the overnight ride, it was such a fun, interesting group I was happy to stay up and talk. One of the first questions I asked as we rode through the dark, winding roads surrounded by deep-green tea gardens, was about insurgent groups in Assam. I got a long, complicated answer which Ashok ended with “just look it up on Wikipedia…” I then asked about a bombing I had read about in The Assam Tribune that morning—

“What was that bombing about?”

I was brushed off, “Oh just insurgents groups killing innocent people for attention.”

“Oh… where was it?”

“In Nagaon District.”

“Where is Nagaon District?”

“We’re driving through it now.”

At that point I stopped asking questions…

Around 5:00 AM Ashok and I arrived in Golaghat District. We met Bhupin, the District Coordinator, who showed us a room in his home. We went to sleep then, but at about 7:00 AM I woke up when I heard Ashok on the phone.

“Sorry to wake you, Pushkar, but it was important: one of our District Coordinators was just attacked by a jackal.”

“What?”

“Well it seems that a jackal wandered into his house and when they saw each other both of them got very scared. The jackal attacked our District Coordinator and cut up his face, hands, and stomach—but he’s ok now, he’s in the hospital getting stitches.”

Fortunately this seemed to be an isolated, fluke incident. But unfortunately jackals aren’t the only ones picking on Pratham Coordinators.


[Derhasat Brahma, Pratham Block Coordinator]

In Kokrajhar District, I learned of the story of Derhasat Brahma, a Pratham Block Coordinator who visited the Sarpanch (village mayor) in the village of Gomabil on May 21st in order to try to get support for a Pratham summer camp in the village. After having a relatively productive meeting, Derhasat rode his bike back to his home in another village.

Just as he was getting to his front door, he was approached by 2 men who asked him for identification. It turns out that these men were from the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) and that Gomabil village was in NDFB territory. The men suspected Derhasat of “spying” on NDFB activities for a rival organization under the cover of Pratham. After trying to confirm Derhasat’s identity, the NDFB men took him to a NDFB office and with a group of others interrogated him.

After 4 hours, the NDFB guys finally let Derhasat go. Derhasat said although it was a very intimidating atmosphere, the men were actually pretty kind.

Since then, the Pratham District Coordinators in Kokrajhar have announced to key government— and non-government officials— that Pratham will be hosting camps in Kokrajhar, in order to avoid these kind of problems in the future.

At the end of my conversation I asked Derhasat if he would go back again to Gomabil. His answer? “Yes, I have to go back there—it’s my job.”


______________________________________________________
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Tuesday, July 1, 2008

First Day of Summer Camps in Assam

I met the Kampur District Coordinator this morning for breakfast at about 8:30am. Since today was the first day of summer camps in Assam, he was a busy, nervous, and taking a number of phone calls during the meal. At about 9am he picked up a 5th phone call, spoke in Assamese (which I don't understand), then looked at me and said:

“A camp is now starting, Pushkar, please say some inspirational words to them.”*
He then handed me the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello, sir! We have you on speakerphone and are waiting for something inspirational. Please share!”

These are the kind of things I fall into on some days.

After imparting concise world-class wisdom and philosophical force (not really), we finished up with breakfast (which was excellent-- go to Maharaja Dhaba in Kampur if you can) and then moved on to see the start of summer camps in Assam.

On the first day of every summer camp across the country, teachers are expected to do “baseline” tests to determine what level of comprehension their students are at. Please see the brief video clip below to watch baseline testing in Assam.




*For the record, I’m fairly positive Pranav passed me the phone not because he thought I was inspirational, but just because he didn’t want to do it himself…




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Sunday, June 29, 2008

Assam

The Assamese chapter of Read India, known as “Porhim, Hikim” (Assamese for “Read & Learn”) was launched in August 2007. An ambitious program, cosponsored by the Assam SSA Ministry and UNICEF, was focused on training 32,000 teachers with better teaching techniques in all of Assam’s 23 districts.

Due to poor performance by the Assamese SSA Ministry in 2007, in addition to teachers’ heavy skepticism of SSA programs, in August 2008 “Porhim, Hikim” will partner only with UNICEF in an effort to win stronger teacher support. This time around Pratham and UNICEF will target specific Tea Garden schools in 11districts in Assam. Tea Garden Communities are mostly populated by laborers who are generally paid poorly to work in tea gardens collecting tea leaves. Tea Garden Communities are a very large population of Assam, as it is estimated that Assam provides 1/6 of the world’s tea.


[An Assamese Tea Garden]

However, before teacher training begins in August the Assam state team has taken on the major task of putting on summer camps in 22 of 23 Districts in Assam, and the massive mobilization of people underway here for the summer camps is incredible. In mid-April this year, the ~40 Pratham District Coordinators (DCs) hired a total of 423 “Cluster” Coordinators (CCs) [note: a “cluster” is defined as about 40-50 schools] to work for 4 months to mobilize thousands of volunteers in rural Assam and oversee the successful implementation of summer camps in their clusters.

Pratham Assam’s summer camp objectives are the same as other camps I have visited: to raise children’s comprehension up 1 level in reading and mathematics.

Tomorrow Ashok and I head out to visit the autonomous District of Kokrajhar as they are having a special inauguration of the summer camps for the District, and they expect many local officials to come out for it.



______________________________________________________
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Airtel Nowhere

I stepped into the cab and told the driver to take me to “Zoo Road Tiniali,” the area where the Pratham Assam office is. Sitting in the back seat, I looked around at the lush, green plants and stout trees that lined the road we set off on. Small billboards stood atop metal poles on the stone divider that separated the driving lanes and announced:
Airtel Everywhere
Airtel Everywhere
Airtel Everywhere
Airtel Everywhere
Airtel Everywhere
Airtel Everywhere
Airtel Everywhere



I switched on my Airtel phone (I swear this is not an Airtel commercial…) to let Mutum Ashok, the Assam State Coordinator, that I was on my way. The phone turned on and strangely gave me zero-bars of reception. Hmmm… but what about
Airtel Everywhere?
Airtel Everywhere?
Airtel Everywhere?

An hour later, while having lunch with Ashok on the patio of an outdoor restaurant in Guwahati, Assam’s main city, he explained to me that because of heavy insurgency-movements in the Northeastern states of India the Indian government blocks the signal of pre-paid telephones (like BOOST-mobile in the US) because the government believes insurgency groups could use prepaid phones to carry out their anti-state activities. No phone for 10 days.

He then explained that my Pratham-issued Reliance Datacard, which allows me to access the internet through the Reliance mobile phone network (this entry is basically going to be one long advertisement…) would not work either for the same reasons. No internet/email for 10 days. And so, no blogging for 10 days...


______________________________________________________
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Saturday, June 21, 2008

Saying Bye in Gujarat

After visiting multiple villages in Gujarat, relieved that the Pratham Teaching Learning Material had been distributed to the Anganwadis by the state government, and satisfied by the teaching methods the Anganwadi workers were using, I traveled with Vasant (a Pratham Gujarat 6-year veteran) to the village of Raipur in the Gandhinagar District of Gujarat.

When we arrived at the Anganwadi there, we found 30 children in lines with plates in their hands. It seemed that the Sarpanch (the elected community leader) was hosting a lunch for the entire village to mourn the passing of his father and that the children were preparing to head out for that. While we were speaking with the Anganwadi worker, a large tractor pull up in front of the school. Behind the tractor was a large flatbed and we realized that was how the kids were traveling to the Sarpanch’s home. The kids eagerly jumped onto the flatbed and I (just as eagerly) ran over to get some pictures. When the tractor had left and we had finished speaking to the Principal, we set off to go back to Ahmedabad on Vasant’s motorcycle. On the road, we caught up to our friends…

(Look out for the Principal of the school as he rides by us with a handkerchief around his head, and be sure to watch to the end to catch a quick cameo by the daring filmaker himself-- me.)






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Friday, June 20, 2008

How Old Are These Kids?

Here's a strange, confusing story:

The academic school year started this week and in the village of Bhakodra in the Ankleshwar Block of the Bharuch District we visited an Anganwadi (government-sponsored kindergarten) to see how the new year was going. But when we arrived at 10:15am (Anganwadis open at 10) there were only 5 children there and more importantly no Anganwadi worker.

The assistant to the worker, who was there instead, told us that the government supervisor of Anganwadi workers in the area had called a meeting for all Angawadi workers. While I was very skeptical of this at first, the Anganwadi worker’s daily log had a note (dated yesterday) written by her supervisor that said she was calling a meeting for all Anganwadi workers. So that seemed legitimate.

But then...
the assistant Anganwadi worker told us that with the academic year starting this week, all 4 year-olds in the village had been sent to start Std I. The Pratham worker I was with told me that all across Gujarat 4 year-olds were being shifted into Std I. This wasn't right.

So I called into the Ahmedabad office to double-check the facts. Those in the office confirmed that only 5 & 6 year-olds (not 4 year-olds) should not be placed in Std I. They also suggested that we speak with those at the Primary school to see what was going down.

At the Primary school we spoke with the Principal. The Principal told us that only 5 year-olds were enrolled in Std I and that the assistant Anganwadi worker was wrong. I was a little relieved, but with all the confusion in the town, I was not convinced that this was happening, so I thought it would be useful to talk with the kids in Std I.

The Principal walked us to the Std I classroom and told me the students were all 5. I looked around the class and saw a tiny girl in her blue uniform and I asked her how old she was. The Principal told me she was too young and wouldn’t know her age, but she proved him wrong and replied “Four.” We then checked with all the kids in the class and we found that 6 of 35 kids were 4 years-old. To me this was a problem.

The Principal then told me that if the children would be 5 by August 1st they were considered 5 and fit for Std I. I was very skeptical of this, and tried to ask some of the children there birthdate. My Pratham colleague translated my Hindi into Gujarati but it seemed like the children did not know their birthdates. I asked for documentation, records, etc. but was told it was too early in the year and that they did not have them yet.

It was a very strange visit in Bhakodra, from the Anganwadi worker not being there, to the confusion over the children's age. I was frustrated not to be able solve the problem, but sometimes things just work out that way...

______________________________________________________
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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Gujarat

I flew to Delhi from Patna last night, and this afternoon flew to Ahmedabad-- quick, cross-country traveling! I reached the Pratham Gujarat office around 6pm and sat with State Head Deepak Dogra, who explained how Pratham Gujarat has taken a different approach to summer camps than anywhere else in the country.

For over a year the Gujarat state Sarva Shiksa Abhiyan Ministry (with the mission to make sure all children are enrolled in school) has focused on enrolling 5 year-old children into Standard I (Std I--1st grade-- which children usually enter at the age of 6) in order to reduce the number of 6 year-olds out of school. Like it or not, this new policy has been successful, as demonstrated by the 33% increase of 5 year-olds enrolled in government schools shown in the table "In pre-school (Balwadi/Anganwadi) or in school 2006 vs. 2007" on page 119 of the ASER 2007 Report.

In order to complement the government's approach Pratham Gujarat has chosen to focus its summer campaign on ensuring that these 5 year-olds are sufficiently prepared when they enter Std I. So this summer Pratham's objective is to make 5 year-old children who will be entering Std I in mid-June (soon) proficient in reading letters and identifying numbers.

But how? Pratham's answer in Gujarat is to train government Anganwadi (kindergarten) workers with Pratham techniques. In April, with the permission of the Gujarat state government, Pratham trained approximately 35,000 Anganwadi workers all across Gujarat. The workers, who work in about 18,000 villages, were also supplied with Pratham-created Teaching Learning Material (TLM) distributed to the anganwadi workers by the state of Gujarat.

It will be interesting visiting Anganwadis after seeing only summer camps to this point. I'll be in Gujarat for the next 2 days and will write soon on what I see.

______________________________________________________
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Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The Music of Gyanshalas

Bihar is state that has continually been ravaged by river flooding. In August 2007,

"State Disaster Management department sources said over 11 million people spread over 4,822 villages in Muzaffarpur, Sitamarhi, Saharsa, East Champaran, Supaul, Darbhanga, Patna, Bhagalpur, West Champaran, Katihar, Madhubani, Samastipur, Sheohar, Nalanda, Khagaria, Gopalganj, Madhepura, Araria and Begusarai were affected by the floods." (http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=90467)

Devasting flooding combined with a variety of other factors (including a lack of employment opportunities and poverty) has led to heavy migration from Bihar. Migration is especially prevalent in the Sitamarhi District (where we are now) which is a major source for child labourers working across India. For many years Pratham has worked to break this cycle and free children from labouring in big cities such as Mumbai and Delhi. One Pratham initiative has gone the distance and returned Bihari child migrants back to their home districts in Bihar. With their parents consent many of these boys have entered Pratham Gyanshalas (meaning "Gyan" Knowledge "shala" School) which provides lodging, 3 meals a day, tutoring services, and a caring community. There are 6 Gyanshalas in Bihar, 4 in Sitamarhi and 2 in the Kishanganj District.

Rukmini and I stayed in a Gyanshala in Sitamarhi and last night at about 10pm we spoke with the ~30 boys. They asked me all sorts of questions about being from America and asked Rukmini even more questions about her work-related visit to Pakistan (she had only good things to say).**

This afternoon (after visiting 4 summer camps) we stopped by another Gyanshala in Sonbarsa Block where I met Muhammed Quyum.
Muhammed is from the village of Davrimore (near Silampur) and had never been to school before he moved to Delhi to work at a Zari (embroidery factory) at age 9. He spent about half a year working in a tight, cramped room before finally moving back to Bihar to live and study in a Pratham Gyanshala. Muhammed has been living in the Gyanshala for 2-and a half years now, and while he was shy and timid, he still possessed a rough exterior which made it difficult to fully engage him.

We learned that Muhammed was a great singer and he was brought a tabla to perform. Please watch this video below; it is one of the most touching and painful performances I have ever seen. Muhammed sings a song called "Kahai Tune Mujko Bombay Bhejah?" which translates to "Why did you send me to Bombay?" The song is about a young boy in a sweatshop who sings to his mother, asking "why did you send me away?" and "please bring me back home."

While Muhammed sang this song, many of his peers hummed along in unison. Watching them all share in this song together was both heart-breaking and empowering. After all they've been through, it's difficult to understand how these boys could smile as large as they did, and be as kind and welcoming as they were. Even though they have had a very tough past, it looks to me that with Pratham's help they each have promising futures.



**Side-note Highlight of the Day (continued from above):
At the end of this impromptu class session Rukmini asked Arun, one of the boys there known as a great musician, to sing a song in Bhojpuri (a Bihari language). After he finished, she looked at me and said, "Pushkar, why don't you sing a song in English for them?" I definitely wasn't expecting that. After a moment of heavy anticipation-- with all the boys staring at me-- I began.

Sometimes in our lives,
We all have pain,
We all have sorrow.
But if we are wise,
We know that there's
Always tomorrow...

I was singing Bill Wither's "Lean on Me." I gathered my courage and as I sang louder (and more soulfully...) I even got some of them--the ones who realized I needed a friend-- to begin clapping along with me. I finished and was greeted with mild applause and a lot of giggling. After we translated the song into Hindi so the boys could clearly understand the song's meaning, I received a much more enthusiastic applause.
And then? Rukmini suggested we teach each other the songs.

20 minutes later I had 6 interested pupils arranged in a standing chorus, reading the lyrics (in English) off of my notebook (while trying to get them to understand me through my American accent). I wish I could say it was a success.

It was a monumental undertaking for them,
it was a surreal moment for us all,
but when the tonal chaos of the exercise finally ended, the boys pulled out a harmonium and tabla and we filled the entire Gyanshala with another type of soul music.
______________________________________________________
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Monday, June 16, 2008

Double-Double

We were sitting in our maroon Tata Sumo musing on what we had seen.

2 days of visits to summer camps in Sitamarhi District in the state of Bihar and what had we seen? 7 villages, almost 30 teachers, and hundreds of children.

Now at Jainagar, a village on the Nepalese border, we had arrived just a few minutes late and the camp was just letting out. There were 6 of us and a driver in our team. While half our team had stepped out to talk with the teachers at the camp, Dr. Rukmini Banerji, I, and Manoj of the Pratham Bihar team reflected one our travels.

"They're too much like regular classes," Rukmini, Pratham's North India Director said. "They're not energized enough." I was confused by this statement as I had been overwhelmed by the success of the Bihar camps; there were more children in these camps than any I had seen (90 children were at the Dhostia camp we visited, and they were well-organized and had been split into 5 separate groups based on their comprehension levels)-- but here was Rukmini focusing on how to improve the camps. "We need to spend more time on training our volunteers with summer camp specific activities, so they don't slip into the habit of just teaching a class-- it's summer, this should be fun!"

And just then a thin, 8 year-old boy with books in his hands ran passed our car.

"Want to play a game?" Rukmini asked in Hindi.

The boy stopped, stood up very straight, and looked up at her confusedly. Another boy, running out of the camp, stopped beside his peer and stared up at Rukmini.

"It's called double-double. I'll say a number, then you double it. Ok? Ok: one."

"Two!" the boys shouted out.

"Now double that."

"Four!"

"And next?"

"Eight," the boys said in unison.

By now more children had stopped and joined the game.

"Sixteen!" the group called out.

"After that?"

"Thirty-two!"

A crowd was growing outside Rukmini's open car door, as the number of children double-doubled exponentially faster than the numbers in the game. Taking one of the children's mini-blackboards and chalk, she began to lead another game. Parents and school teachers soon joined the crowd and the laughter as she interacted with the children.

Only minutes after arriving at a summer camp that had already ended for the day, I watched as Pratham's North India Director charmed an entire group of children-- and their community; getting them to stay on passed the end of their scheduled day, while at the same time demonstrating to local teachers how a summer camp could be magnetic, fun, and still educational.

And me? I soaked up the scene. And then with a big smile on my face, I shot this video to share the moment with you all.




After about 30 minutes, we began to pack up to leave, but the children wouldn't let us be. They wanted more games, more questions, more fun! And then as we finally began to drive away, the kids did something that I'd only seen in movies before-- they ran behind our car yelling, laughing, waving to us in pure joy. As we drove off, leaving the tidal wave of Jainagar's children in our wake, I sat back in my chair and was reminded of why I work for Pratham.

______________________________________________________
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Sunday, June 15, 2008

Bihar

"24 hours ago I was on the border of India & Pakistan; today I can see Nepal.

I arrived in Delhi from Amritsar last night at 11pm and flew to the capital of Bihar, Patna, this morning at 10am. I'm traveling to the Sitamarhi District (which borders on Nepal) with Pratham North India Director, Rukmini Banerji, who helps coordinate Pratham's Bihar programs and is my mentor on this project.

On the plane this morning (while half-asleep, but don't tell her...) I interviewed Ma'am about the Bihar summer camp program and Pratham's history in Bihar. Here's a condensed version of the interview:

A great intro to Pratham's work in Bihar is available at the PrathamUK YouTube channel (narrated by the best voice I've ever heard in my life):

Play Pratham in Bihar
(http://www.youtube.com/PrathamUK)

Pratham's first venture into summer camps was in the summer of 2006 in Bihar (touched on in the film above). These camps were for girls ; girls who had not been to school before and for girls who were in school but were not able to read fluently. The 2006 summer camps were carried out jointly by three partners: Bihar Education Project (BEP, which is the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Ministry of the Bihari Government), Pratham, and UNICEF. Throughout the summer vacation in June, these summer camps ran in 2 blocks of every district in Bihar.

The successful experience of the summer camps led Pratham, BEP, and UNICEF to work in a more long-run partnership. A larger joint program called "Sankalp" was launched in late 2006 in 7 of Bihar's most educationally weak districts. The aim of Sankalp was to improve basic learning levels and ensure that all children were enrolled in school and attending regularly. Pratham integrated its Read India campaign into Sankalp. In 2008, 10 more districts have been added to the Sankalp program.

For the 2008 summer camps in Bihar, the target groups are children in Std 3, 4 and 5 who are not yet able to read sentences or do simple arithmetic operations. The aim is that by the time regular schools open in July, children who had fallen behind academically will have made up lost ground. To reach this goal, 2 government school teachers or para-teachers will work in school during the summer and will be joined by 1-2 village volunteers who have been mobilized by Pratham. While government summer camps will run in all schools in the state; in 20 districts, Pratham teams will serve as volunteers while other Pratham members will constantly visit schools, observing camps and supporting teachers and volunteers.

Bihar has 37 districts and about 65,000 government primary schools. Pratham has a presence in 19 districts and has mobilized close to 50,000 volunteers - 1 or 2 village volunteers in each one of 30,000 villages/schools. In all summer camps should benefit close to 3.5 million children across the state.

Side-note highlight of the day:
During a large meeting this evening with all Sitamarhi Block Coordinators, I noticed one Block Coordinator wearing a purple t-shirt with the words "Apes Never Kill Apes" on it-- a reference to The Planet of the Apes movies... I didn't know that the Pratham Bihar team was so well-versed in late 60s American sci-fi cinema....
______________________________________________________
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Saturday, June 14, 2008

Golden Temple at Amritsar

While in Amritsar I went to visit the Golden Temple in the evening. The Temple is a spectacular site, a golden island shining at the center of a lake of water and worshippers. Just incredible.

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List of Punjabi Villages Visited

Hard work pays off.

That's me in the red, hitting for six.

After a week of hard work, we were able to fit a little cricket in. As for my travels over this last week, I thought it would be nice to list the names of all the villages I visited in Punjab in one place. Maybe someone reading this is from one of these villages? Maybe not...


District: Ludhiana
Block: Ludhiana II
Villages:
-Hassanpur
-Bhadowal
-Jhandeh
-Threeke



District: Gurdaspur
Block: Pathankot
Villages:
-Jhanjheli
-Pangoli
-Chhaki

Block: Dhariwal I
Villages:
-Rania
-Santanagar

Block: Pathankot I
Villages:
-Dhangror

Block: Batalla II
Villages:
-Kandial
-Kotlipansingh
-Bhadrepure


District: Amritsar
Block: Amritsar I
Villages:
-Ramapura
-Chitrakhurp
-Mahama

Block: Amritsar VI
Villages:
-Pandori
-Chatiwind

______________________________________________________
www.pratham.org
www.readindia.org
www.prathamusa.org

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Final Day in Ludhiana

Yesterday was my final day in Ludhiana, and it coincided with the monthly meeting of all Pratham District Coordinators (PDCs) in Punjab meeting with the two State Head Directors, Bharatdeep Singh Malhi and Ronald Abraham, with whom I’d been working and staying with in Ludhiana. The Pratham Punjab program is just about 2 years old and has recently ratcheted up their work dramatically preparing for Parrho Punjab (the local version of Read India) which will work very closely with the State Ministry of Education in order to improve education dramatically across the state.

The breadth of this program is unbelievable, for example: Pratham Punjab recently hired almost 150 more Block Coordinators in the span of a few weeks when the government agreed to fully participate in the program.

It is worth noting that during my time in Ludhiana I witnessed Ronald and Bharat's extraordinary commitment and exceptional work. Ronald has a BA in Economics from St. Stephens College at Delhi University (which people—Stephanians at least—claim is the Harvard of India) and worked for a policy think-tank in Delhi before joining the Pratham national Research/Analysis group and was vital to the success of the 2006 & 2007 ASER reports, in addition to numerous other projects.

Like Ron, Bharatdeep’s 2-year anniversary with Pratham is at the end of this July. Bharat was born and raised in Ludhiana, and completed a BA in Economics/Geography/English and an MA in Geography. After this he received a scholarship from the Norwegian government to get his MPhil in Developmental Studies from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Three days after he finished in Norway he returned to Ludhiana to begin work as the first State Head of Pratham Punjab.

See both of these passionate men talk more about Pratham’s work in Punjab below:



At the end of a long day of meetings with Pratham District Coordinators, Ron and Bharat presented a certificate to Baljinder Singh of Gurdaspur District for Outstanding work as a PDC. The certificate and a 500 Rs. prize is given out monthly to a deserving PDC to encourage quality work for the PDCs (who all work full time for Pratham).

After this meeting ended Baljinder and I left for Gurdaspur where we would visit more summer camps.


______________________________________________________
www.pratham.org
www.readindia.org
www.prathamusa.org

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Summer Camps in Ludhiana District, Punjab

Today I set out with Ajay Singh, a Pratham Punjab state-support member, to visit Pratham summer camps in the rural Ludhiana II Block of Ludhiana District (states are split administratively into Districts and then Blocks).

Our goal was to visit four villages to see four summer camps. We hadn’t given the camps any advanced notice that we were coming; these were surprise visits meant to see how the camps were really operating day-to-day.

Before I talk more about the actual visits, here are some details about Pratham summer camps:

  • They emphasize teaching literacy (in local language), numeracy, and creating a fun atmosphere, with students learning through games and play—it is summer break…
  • Last about 1 month long; 2 hours a day, 6 days a week
  • Most take place during May or June, with a couple in July
  • Student assessments are done at the beginning and end of the summer camp in order to determine student abilities (and therefore what and growth (if anyone is interested in hearing more about how we assess students please just leave a comment asking).
  • Taught by volunteer teachers (recruited by Pratham "mobilizers"), with support by Pratham District Coordinators, Pratham Block Coordinators.

The camps we saw in Ludhiana II Block were operating out of government schools and ran from 9-11am. Most families in this area make a living as farmers or laborers. We visited four camps in Hassanpur, Bhadowal, Jhandeh, and Threeke and while each camp was unique in its own way, the most noteworthy one was in Hassanpur.

We arrived at the Hassanpur camp at 8:50am, and though it was humid, it was rather pleasant as there was a cool breeze in the air. What we found was also pleasant-- students had arrived early and had already begun learning. Ajay and I watched as the classroom filled up with 20 students ages 5-8, who read a paragraph word by word as a Pratham volunteer teacher lead them through it on the board. The classroom was well-maintained, had 2 new fully-functioning overhead fans in it, and a very sweet blackboard—a giant green apple painted on the front wall (pictures on the right).

After observing for about 15 minutes we moved next door to a Pratham-Bharti library, decorated, almost floor to ceiling, with drawings made by the students. A Pratham volunteer oversaw the classroom of 26 students each with a Pratham book in hand. The students read aloud quietly to themselves creating a wonderfully warm sound—an excited buzzing which bordered on the intensity of prayer. Ajay and I looked at each other and couldn’t help but smiling.

(Hassanpur, Pratham Library)


(Threeke, Posters on the wall)
(Threeke, Pratham class)
(Threeke, Pratham shop game)
(Bhadowal, Government multiplication tables on interior wall of school)


Side note highlight of the day:

Today I saw a sign for a place advertised as a “Canadian restaurant.”
Canadian restaurant?
I've never been to a place that serves "Canadian" cuisine. Anyone out there been to one? Or even better has anyone ever had Canadian bacon in Punjab?

Tomorrow:
To Gurdaspur, northernmost district of Punjab, which borders on Jammu & Kashmir and Pakistan.

_____________________________________________________
www.pratham.org
www.readindia.org
www.prathamusa.org