Going Home

Well here I am at the end of my time here in India. I am back in Delhi and over the past two days have been feverishly working on my report. It is almost done I am happy to say, just a few finishing touches to put on it upon my return to New York. Trying to synthesize everything that I have seen and heard from volunteers, Pratham workers and government officials has been difficult. By difficult, I mean that I have experienced and learned so much that creating a cohesive, comprehensive narrative which encompasses everything that I wish to convey poses a challenge. I believe that for the most part I have accomplished the feat.  

During my stay I have seen many faces of this vast country, but I know that I have only scratched the surface. I once read in a Lonely Planet guidebook that India is less a country than a continent all of its own. I now fully agree with that appraisal. This feeling was reinforced when I learned recently that there are something in the range of nineteen different major languages within India. Along with this, there are hundreds of individual dialects scattered across the length and breadth of the subcontinent.  When viewed from this perspective the necessity for local volunteers and the knowledge that they hold becomes even more important. Even a highly committed NGO such as Pratham could not hope to operate on the large scale that is does throughout India without their local workers. These workers have provided some of the best moments for me. Their unceasing work both for Pratham and their communities should be an inspiration for anyone who wants to help out those who are less fortunate then themselves. My guide and translator while I was in Amritsar, Pearl, perfectly sums up this commitment. Outside of her work for Pratham as a district coordinator she also individually teaches over ninety children from the slums near her home. She works tirelessly to bring them to a level where they can attend school and excel. She also feeds and cares for 16 stray dogs.

Despite the amazing experiences I have had while in India, I will  say that I am happy to be going back to New York. It will be nice to be able to speak english to someone and not receive an uncomprehending smile as a response. I will no longer need to communicate with hand gestures to tell the cab driver where I want to go (although with New York cabbies, this may not be the case). And perhaps most importantly of all, I will be able to have bacon at breakfast, and maybe even a steak for dinner. 

To anyone who has read this blog and not visited India I implore you to consider planning your next vacation here. If you do come, do not spend your  entire time in some swanky western resort hotel. Get out and meet the people of this amazing place. Ride the trains, and if your stomach is strong enough, the buses. Eat the food, but watch out for the water. And most importantly, come with an open mind, you may just learn something. 

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

Fieldwork around Ludhiana

First I would like to apologize for the lack of posts in the past few days. Through a combination of power cuts and traveling I have found it difficult to find time to write anything. I hope to make up for it now with a long post.

Over the past few days I have visited numerous villages and schools in and around Ludhiana continuing my work of interviewing volunteers. Once again I have been amazed by the success of the Parrho Punjab program in improving learning levels for young children. I have found that this success is rooted in ability of the program to fundamentally change the classroom dynamic within the schools themselves. A volunteer named Rajdeep shed some light on the subject for me. When I questioned her on how the classroom has changed since she was in primary school she told me that teachers in the past used the method of, "teaching with a stick". Insolent children would receive a rap across the knuckles for misbehaving. In a society where it is easy for children to skip school due to a lack of effective monitoring for absenteeism and community support for education it seems obvious that such draconian punishments would make a child not want to attend school. The volunteers of Parrho Punjab on the other hand all emphasized to me that they were explicitly told in their training not to harshly scold the children. They should be treated like a "delicate flower" one volunteer expressed to me. The parrho Punjab program now has children eager to learn and thus far the only drawback I have found is that the daily two hour classes make it difficult for teachers to complete their assigned government syllabus. Clearly further integration of the government mandated syllabus and parrho punjab methods could alleviate this problem.

On wednesday I attached myself to a Pratham team and followed them as they visited villages without volunteers in an attempt to drum up support for volunteer work. The first step was to visit the democratically elected village head, (known as a "Sarpanch"). After we sat down in his home, (which was equivalent in size to an average east village duplex apartment if you have ever lived in New York) we were offered tea and began the process of convincing him to allow us to canvas for volunteers. 

At first he seemed reluctant and we thought we may have to continue without his support, but the dogged Pratham workers eventually began to break him down. They told him that education was for the good of the entire community, not only the children. They also mentioned how volunteers after some time in the classroom grow in self confidence. This I can personally attest to as many of the teachers I have spoken with during my interviews mention how their volunteers began as shy and unsure of themselves. After a few months these same volunteers are vocal and opinionated with serious goals of continuing their education so as to become fully qualified teachers. Soon the Sarpanch saw the value of volunteer work and even put forth his own daughter as a prospective parrho punjab recruit. He also referred us to some other young women around the village who could also be considered prospective workers. The mother of one of these girls proved more difficult to convince. She thought that all this traveling and exposure to the outside world could be dangerous for her child. I could somewhat understand her concerns as her daughter may have travel a few kilometers away from home to work in a school. This would mean either walking or hitching a ride to her destination. Other, more conservative families refused to even let us into their house. A shake of the head and mumbled refusals greeted us when we enquired about the availability of the daughter for volunteer work. This was promptly followed by the door being shut in our face. To display the contrast in opinon to our work, after one angry refusal we knocked on the neighbors door and were welcomed inside. The grandmother who spoke with us said that all her grand daughter did was sit around the house and that it would be good for her to get out and grow in experience. Less than five feet apart I was able to view first hand the conservative and progressive faces of India. 

I also visited the city of Chandigarh to sit in on a meeting between the Pratham Punjab team and government officials. The purpose of the meeting was to establish a framework for the upcoming year. This included modifying the existing structure so as to make it more efficient and hammering out a budget for Parrho Punjab. Everyone involved were interested in expanding the successful program to more schools, which I have been told is in great contrast to when they initially attempted to implement the parrho punjab system. It required almost a year of work in schools and in government boardrooms for Pratham to convince the education officials to fund and support their work. As I look around the offices now, Pratham created Parrho Punjab material lines the walls. Clearly they think very highly of the program these days. I must sign off now as I have to finish off the report I was brought here to write. Ciao

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

The golden temple and Ludhiana

Before departing from Amritsar to continue my work in the city of Ludhiana I had to go and visit the golden temple. The pratham contact, Pearl, and here uncle met me outside my hotel at 8 at night. We drove through the natrrow streets of old Amritsar, many times during this drive I felt sure we would be in an accident. India to the outsider appears to have no traffic laws. If there is a road you can drive however you please on it, especially against traffic as I have done a number of times during autorickshaw rides. It appears to be some sort of controlled chaos. There seems to be some intricate unwritten language of honking and hand signals that only the native Indian driver understands. 

But I digress. We parked the car near the golden temple and turned in our shoes at a depository, (one must be barefoot within the temple grounds). I was told that these people handle over one million pairs of shoes a year, I don't doubt it. After washing my feet and walking through an archway I caught my first glimpse of the temple. The entire top half of the building is made of pure gold and it sits on a small island in the middle of a lake with a narrow bridge packed with pilgrims connecting it to the shore. Seeing it at night lit up with lights is an amazing sight. Words do not do it justice, it must be seen to be believed. Inside the temple is the holy book of the Sikh's and some of the most incredible inlay work within the gold itself. Hymns are constantly sung 24 hours a day by the monks and their hauntingly beautiful melodies are broadcasted throughout the temple complex, (and as I noticed later back in my hotel room, 24h hours a day on a devoted tv  channel). Anyone who comes to northern India must visit the temple in Amritsar. I compare it to St. Peters cathedral in rome but without all the tacky christian symbology. 

The next day I left Amritsar and boarded a bus to take me on a 4 hour journey to Ludhiana. Whereas Amritsar is located close to the Pakistan border, Ludhiana is smack in the middle of the state of Punjab. The first thing that struck me about Ludhiana is that it appears far more modern than Amritsar. Western style malls and food outlets (KFC!!) dot this charming city. Here I met Bharat who would be my new contact and got settled in a hotel. In my next post I shall tell you about my experiences interviewing volunteers in and around the city. I shall also tell you about the greatest autorickshaw driver of all time, or atleast that I have met. Cheers!

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

Field Work south of Amritsar

I recently took a two hour bus ride south to the city of Jalandir (spelling could be incorrect). Thankfully we managed to board one of the few air conditioned buses which made the journey very comfortable. There was a large tv screen at the front of the bus that screened a very popular bollywood film that everyone on board enjoyed. This was the first such film I had watched and found what I could follow to be entertaining. This included a surprise music video during the closing credits starring, of all people, Snoop Dogg. I am fairly confident that this song was never released outside of India and hearing the famous south central LA former gangster rap along to Indian beats with traditonal Indian backround singers made my day.

When I arrived at the bus teerminus at my destination was waited for other pratham team members. Once they arrived we began to make out way torwards the exit when a new member on the team named Curran received an angry call from a governent education official. He insisted that we wait for him to arrive so he could personally drive us around to the schools. What he failed to mention was that he would take an hour to arrive. Valuable time was being wasted and the rising temperatures made everyone edgy. Once he arrived we set off in his car (the AC was predictably broken) towards our first school. About halfway there he informed us that we would be making a quick detour to visit a teacher training class. We tried in vain to convince him that it would be more valuable for us to go directly to the school as planned but he ignored these pleas. Before I go any further want to defend this official. His heart was clearly in the right place but he had clearly not understood the nature of my job. The training was interesting enough, but when he asked me in front of the entire group to say a few words I was taken aback. I nervously approached the podium and stammered out some cliched sentances about the value of education and children being the future. While both these things are very true, it would have nice to have actually prepared a short speech. Luckily I was told that most of the people assembled there could not understand me anyway. After this we left and I began the process of interviewing, which was far more successfull than my speech.

At one school I was told that for 250 children there were only 2 teachers, and the number of students were set to rise due to the success of the Parrho punjab english program. This program had convinced parents to allow their children to attend school regularly so as to learn English. They recognize that knowledge of this language is a powerful skill that these children will require if they want to move out of thier village and become successful in the wider world. The official even explained that some kids were leaving private schools and returning to the government schools in their area because of Parrho Punjab. If this is true then the volunteers recruited through Pratham become even more important to teach the children and help out at the school. Many of the volunteers I have spoken with all express a desire to teach (some even worked at the school before volunteernig for Parrho Punjab). Many want to study for a Bachelors degree so that they can apply of a government paid teaching job. At present they get no money and everyone who I have spoken to has stressed that this is the major point that stops many from volunteering. It would be impossible to pay even a small stipend for travel to these volunteers and there are just too many. The punjab state itself has over 10,000 schools each with a few volunteers. The costs would quickly become untenable. Despite these drawbacks, it is clear that the methods introduced by Pratham and Parrho Punjab work amazingly well. That has been the one constant (despite the money issue) between all of the interviews I have conducted. The amount of children in schools is slowly increasing and they are learning well, very well in fact.
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www.readindia.org
www.pratham.org.uk
www.prathamusa.org
www.pratham.org

Visiting schools and meeting volunteers

It has been long few days since my last post. On wednesday I boarded a public bus and took a hour ride to the town of Batala to visit two primry schools and interview those who work there.

The mercury in the thermometer was well above 100 degrees and I was really struggling with the heat. It was all worth it to meet some amazing volunteers and the children they teach. The emphasis in Prathams Parrho (read) Punjab program is to change the classroom dymanic in order to increase the speed and quality of the childrens learning. This involves the volunteers nd teachers leading the class in a number of learning games designed to make the class room a more interactive place for the student. In the past, the classroom dynamic consisted of a teacher lecturing while the young students quietly listened and took notes. This method was non existent at the schools I visited where I saw first hand children from each class leading their peers in reciting the alphabet. This was all the more impressive when I was told that only days before the majority of these children had no knowledge of the alphabet. Each child took turns leading the class in the recitation while the volunteer stood by to assist if necessary. In another game instituted by Parrho Punjab a hopskotch-like grid was drawn on the floor with individual letters drawn in each square. The kids, one at a time, were told to jump into a square with the correct letter when the teacher or volunteer prompted them. It was clear from the start that the kids loved this game and they were actually pushing and shoving each other in line so tht their turn could come sooner. I was told later that these and other games were designed with the cultural heritage of the Punjabi people in mind so as to make it even more engaging to the children.

On a more personal note, I am enjoying my time here in Amritsar. It is a very pleasant city (despite the at times unbearable heat) and I cannot wait to go and see its most famous monument, the Golden Temple. This temple is known as the spiritual center of the Sikh religion, similar to St. Peters in Rome and Mecca. The roof is made entitrely out of gold I am told and absolutely spectacular when it is lit up in the evening. In fact I mabout to head there right now. In the next post I shall write bout my time in Jalandar, which is a city two hours south ofAmritsar where I met more great volunteers, childrenand one very enthusiastic government official. Stay tuned...

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

Amritsar and beyond

First off I woudld like to apologize in advance for the shortness of this post. I arrived yesterday in Amritsar and took a rickshaw to my hotel after meeting my contact here in the Punjab. I like this region already. It is harvest time and everyone is in the feilds and things are lush, green and very hot. Unfortunately during this time many children are taken out of school to help the family with harvest. To make things worse this is exam period at the end of the school year so these children will not be tested which makes it even harder to gauge any progress made in their education. I will be conducting a number of interviews over the next few days with many people involved with Pratham in the area. The next post shall be filled with information and quotes (hopefully pictures as well) from these volunteers who work hard every day (for no pay) to get these children properly educated. Watch this space.

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

Welcome Back!

Hello to everyone. My name is Brent Phippen and I shall be continuing the fledgling tradition of Pratham summer bloggers. I hope that I can continue the high standards set by Pushkar and company last summer. I shall try my best. Before continuing allow me to introduce myself. 

I was born in Seattle, Washington which is tucked away in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. For those unfamiliar with Seattle, here is a short list of what the city is famous for: suicidal musicians (including Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain), Starbucks, Mircrosoft and unending rain. At the tender age of three my father uprooted our family and transported us across the Atlantic to London, England. Upon graduating from high school in London I then attended New York University in New York City. I graduated from NYU in January of this year with a degree in History and absolutely no idea of what to do next. 

Five years ago a few friends and I visited India. It was during this visit that I first heard of Pratham and the amazing work that they do to not only get young children into school, but ensure that they are learning well, (hence the title of this blog). A few months ago I contacted Pratham asking if I could help in any way and after numerous emails and a very long plane flight, I arrived in New Delhi four days ago.

Tomorrow I will board an early morning train out of New Delhi and ride the rails up to the city of Amritsar in the state of Punjab where I shall begin my work for Pratham in earnest. Along with writing this blog (hopefully daily) I shall also be attached to the Pratham team in Punjab. I shall be conducting interviews with the many people involved in Pratham's volunteer recruiting across Punjab from the rural to district and state levels. The goal of these interviews will be to identify what works well and what needs further improvement in the process of volunteer recruiting in the region. I am chomping at the bit to get started and cannot wait to begin. 

I must sign off now as I have to venture out into Delhi to find myself a temporary cell phone for the duration of my time here in India. When I next post in this blog I shall be in Amritsar and settled in a hotel that shall be my home for the next few weeks. Thanks for reading!

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