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2.6: "India dec 2003" - Page 2-8   |
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First report 24/25-11-2003 Bangalore "A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity". Buddha Dear friends, Here our first report on the trip to India... We had good flights with no problems and were welcomed by Usha & friends at the airport in Bangalore - local time 4.30 the 24th. After a few hours sleep in the hotel our work started at 12.00 hr. Usha is introducing us to a very friendly person named Sathya NaraYana. He - aged 74 - is the founder of an organization in training self-help-groups for empowerment of woman. He has been doing a lot of social work and healthcare camps for children who suffer from polio. Since his age & health he asked Usha to take it over and is looking for any help to improve this work, especially training of woman in self service and employability projects. One of this special projects is a care and bambooproject for rural woman. We agreed on trying to visit his places...  Then we have a trip towards the outer-area of Bangalore. Here a lot of poor people from all around the country are building there own houses hoping to get work in the big city. Obviously there are a lot of children who are in need of proper education... Here some 'privat'-schools are established. 'Privat' means that it is for the very poor people who can't afford school payment etc. We visited two schools, one for the younger children, and one for the teenagers. Both are established by one person who established the school around 1988 with help from others (they gave them the small land and then the schools were build themselves, all without funds from India-government). Image a open air - but roofed - classroom of 6x4 meter with 25 children sitting, all dressed in school-uniform and a teacher in front: hardly any space or learning equipment... 
So the people made list and showed it to us: more space, new building, playing-equipment, handballs, books, computers etc., Afterwards we do a lot of discussion with Usha. What can we do for them: both in equipment as in newer, modern education... Obviously we just can't arrange some money and get it over with... There are so many schools like this anyway. Only a list is not enough. What they have to do is organize themselves and work out a vision and coals for educational development. Second: they should share there vision working together with other schools. They have to make the first steps and follow training sessions for school development and joyful learning. Perhaps they can organize a tool center together because all schools seem to have the same list of learning equipment. A lot of ideas comes up, and yes, we see some possibilities for the future. Ö Day 2: This day we had to get up real early, because we will visit the rural part of Karnaka. A friend of Usha Gowri - Sesha Prakesh - will guide us. Sesha Prakesh is a bank-manager and for us he has taken some day's off because it is very difficult to find the way in the countryside. After some 3 hours of driving over bumpy roads and sand-roads we end up at a schoolplace in a very beautiful countryside...This school called Adharsh Vioyalay is a Ideal school. The manager is a farmer. The ideal of the school is natural education, the beautiful surroundings and broad perspective (the school is build on a top of a hill) will give the children good spirit for learning, Mr. Ramanagar tells us. Here the children have to walk for more than two hours every day. In rural surroundings there are only schools ten kilometres from each other. This is a special order for stateschools. This school is a privat initiative: the farmer is also the financial resource. Government will not pay because the state school is 8 kilometres from this place. We see a building with very small classrooms where children just can sit. The school's toilet is a place on the playground 3 metres from the school, dust is covered with some leaves... There is no sanitary, no clear water, no place for girls and woman to care for themselves. This is a big problem for girls who start 'there monthly period'. When 'there period' starts, girls will not come to school anymore. We discuss this problem with woman teachers in the school and some bright ideas are comming up. We think there is a possibility to solve this problem in poor schools. We call this project the Pandora box project. We will try to do a pilot for 12 poor schools in the neighborhoods of Bangalore. The goal of the project will be a girls-room (or place) for every school we can develop with a minimum. In the classrooms the children are working in silence. For the questions they copy them from a curriculum book (social science) and use a red ballpoint. The answers they write in blue. This children in the age from 4 to 15 wear school uniforms. In all tree classrooms Dhyan does a little clinic. For dialog with this children she needs a tolk. With help of Sesha Prakesh who translates we can understand each other. Dhyan draws a globe on the blackboard and an airplane to illustrate her story. One boy sings a song for the group. In this song he is telling his dream, a dream of freedom, equality and new possibilities for all Indians in future. Dhyan also sings a song that is telling the story of people in Europe (Ireland) who have the same wish. Drawing and music are world languages we all can perform. Multiple intelligent education will give children more possibilities for long term learning effects. That's the little message behind. After 3 little clinics we discuss the learning method, the ideas and problems of the school. The schoolmanager Ramon agar Str. Gowda has a beautiful ideal that's developing. He likes to use the nature as a strong learning environment and like to find out how this can fit in the curriculum. He shows us medical plants, telling us all he knows about this plants. He tells us about how he - as a farmer - is trying himself to become a sustainable farmer with use of typical plants as a insecticide. This is rural knowledge most elder Indian inhabitants in this rural surroundings used to learn from there family. Because this they could care for themselves without money. With the new economy this knowledge for sustainable art of life looks like disappearing. The school is to small for all the pupils. There is no money to build more rooms. We learn that construction in India is very expensive (land, building material etc.). They say that's the reason to build so small. We from the Netherlands believe that there is also some unawareness and not-understanding of more practical ways of building-constructions & forms of education. They don't seem to be pro-active... 
 While we discuss the needs for improvement we are given a fresh coconut. Then we say goodbye and we travel further to do some site-seeing and end up visiting the palace in Mysore and some temples. After a 3-4 hours trip back in the darkness we came back in our hotel at midnight. Tired, so we have to sleep since tomorrow we will visit a special school for blind children. Well thats for now, more hopefully later! Dhyan, Usha & Harry European Network on Emotional Quality © 2002-2008 |