Have you tried teaching kids??

If you are reading this blog, there are 99.99% chances that you have gone through typical school education, with teachers teaching in classrooms. Do you remember your school days?? Going to school every morning, meeting friends there, playing with friends during the break, sometimes getting scoldings from our teachers and what not!!!

Every child wants to go to school. It is a place where one gets to learn so much. Just imagine how different your life would have been if you had not been able to go to school. We should be really thankful to our teachers who have helped us all the way in our journey of education. But still there are so many children in our society who cannot go to schools because their parents cannot afford to send them to school or may be they have to work as a child laborer.

Even if not a regular schooling, at least some form of alternate education should be enabled for underprivileged children. We at Unnati, have been trying to teach the children on our own whatever little things we can teach to them. It constantly reminds us that how difficult it is teaching children sometimes :-) !!! But at the same time it is so much fun trying to explain things to children. After all what's the use of all our education if we are not able to teach at least few children.

Aashish explaining to kids how a clock shows time!!!


Manoj is the favorite teacher of the kids these days!!!


Not that difficult to make children listen to you!!!


Sometimes you also need to play along with children!!!


Children @Unnati are missing Gyanesh these days!!!


It's not always that easy to explain things
to children!!!


Every child wants to learn!!!


What if these kids go to regular schools??

We are in process of starting a classroom for these kids. We have arranged a teacher with the help of Literacy India for these kids, who would teach them from Monday to Saturday. We have also rented a room not very far from Unnati and the kids would be going there in a group daily along with their teacher. Our aim is to ensure that these children should also benefit by education like other children with whatever means possible. We thought that this may not be possible by just teaching or spending time with them on weekends.

So when these kids would go for the regular classes, they would be provided with required stationeries, some nutritious thing to eat, uniforms in future etc. This would help in keeping these children motivated towards studies. We are also having a talk with their parents to send their children regularly for the classes. Once this initiative starts running smoothly, we would definitely be seeing some visible changes in a period of 6 months to 1 year. Moreover, since Literacy India already has a great deal of expertise in providing education to underprivileged children, these children would be benefited too with the curriculum followed by Literacy India.

But to support such a initiative requires money too. Given below is a rough estimate of the expenses that would occur every month.

Expenses	Amount in Rs.
Teacher Salary	2000-3000
Room Rent	1500
Meal for Children	2000
Literacy India School Monitoring - Transport	0500
Miscellaneous (Books, Stationary etc.)	1000
Total	7000-8000 /Month

Moreover, we need to ensure that at any point of time we have sufficient funds for at least 3 months to ensure that the classes for these children doesn't get hampered due to lack of funds.

You can also help these kids!!!

We really need people like you.

To know more how you can help these kids, please have a look at the following link:

http://gurgaon.aidindia.org/node/16

To know more about activities and details related to Unnati, please go through the following links:
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AID Gurgaon New Project - Unnati ( A look inside the basti, and the people living there!!!)

Republic Day - Initiation day for Project Unnati! (Well what could have been a better day to give it a start)

Unnati off-league ( Time to think how we can bring at least some progress ("Unnati") in lives of these people!!!)

Deciding the Strategic Moves ( Teaching the kids and also brainstorming as how to take things ahead)

Unnati - A parallel world ( Implementing a Modern Open Gurukul!!!)

If you would like to get more details related to this initiative or have any other queries, you can get in touch with following people:

1) Deepak Syal : deepak.syal@gmail.com; Ph no: 09810297880

2) Nishank: onlynishank@gmail.com; Ph no: 09910067703

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Sponsorship of education of 10 children for an year facilitated by AID Gurgaon.

Recently AID Gurgaon facilitated sponsorship of education of 10 children for an year. For this INR 30,000 was handed over to Literacy India. Out of this INR 24,000 was donated by Evalueserve and INR 6,000 was given by AID Gurgaon. This amount would be used in providing education to 10 children at Literacy India under their Vidyapeeth Project (http://literacyindia.org/WEBSITE/html/Vidyapeeth.htm)

Literacy India is a nonprofit organization registered as a trust under the India Trust Act, 1872. Since its inception in 1996, Literacy India has been working towards education of underprivileged children living in slums and rural areas in and around Gurgaon, Haryana. In addition to providing non-formal basic education to children, Literacy India has set up vocational training centers for girls and village women.

Literacy India has been doing a splendid job in reaching children from poor families who cannot afford a quality education. They have different projects targetted for different age groups of children and women. By raising sponsorships we are able to ensure that at least some children are being able to get education in a regular manner.

Here are the brief profiles of the children who would be benefitting from the sponsorship:

1)

Name: Pooja
Age: 10
Class: V
Sex: F
Father’s Occupation : Security Guard
Mother’s occupation : House wife
Brother : 3
Remarks : Neat & clean, obedient
Activity : Dancing

2)

Name: Komal
Age: 11
Class: V
Sex: F
Father’s Occupation: PEON
Mother’s occupation: House wife
Brother: 1
Sisters: 4
Remarks: Well dressed and well behaved




3)

Name : Manisha
Age : 10
Class : V
Sex : F
Father’s Occupation : Sweeper
Mother’s occupation : maid
Brother : 1
Sister : 1
Remarks : Good in studies




4)

Name : Ajay
Age : 13
Class : V
Sex : M
Father’s Occupation : labor
Mother’s occupation : daily wage laborer
Brothers : 2
Sister : 3
Remarks : Hard working student and punctual




5)

Name : Rodhi
Age : 13
Class : V
Sex : M
Father’s Occupation : Gardener
Mother’s occupation : Maid
Brother : 1
Sister : 1
Remarks : Family going through financial crisis.
He is very Naughty but an intelligent student.



6)

Name : Santosh
Age : 14
Class : V
Sex : M
Father’s Occupation : Cook
Mother’s occupation : House wife
Brother : 1
Sister : 1
Remarks : He always stood I in the class.
In previous terminal exams he has
scored 100% marks in math.
He was a working child mainstreamed after counseling

7)

Name : Rajiv
Age : 15
Class : V
Sex : M
Father’s Occupation : Peon
Mother’s occupation : House wife
Brothers : 2
Sisters : 2
Remarks : He is good and obedient student.
He stood II in the previous terminal exams.
He was a working child earlier mainstreamed after counseling.


8)

Name : Srikant
Age : 14
Class : V
Sex : M
Father’s Occupation : Unemployed (Alcoholic)
Mother’s occupation : Household worker
Brothers : 4
Sisters : 3
Remarks : He always scores good marks in the class.
He is liked by all his teachers for his good manners and obedience.



9)

Name : Shyamal
Age : 13
Class : V
Sex : M
Father’s Occupation : Driver
Mother’s occupation : Maid Servant
Brothers : 2
Activity : Participated in many theatrical production of Literacy India
Remarks : He has transformed from a shy Bengali speaking boy to a good student as well as good actor.
Now he can converse in hindi fluently


10)

Name : Bittoo
Age : 12
Class : V
Sex : M
Father’s Occupation : Pvt. Service
Mother’s occupation : Maid Servant
Brother : 1
Sisters : 2
Remarks : He is a well-behaved boy. He is a very sincere, hard-working student.


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Given below are the details of the expenditure that would be incurred for each child:

Sr. No.	Expenditure Heads	Amount per child
1	Uniform Expenses	350
2	Books and Periodicals	450
3	Stationery	500
4	Snacks for children	350
5	Teaching Aids	450
6	Teacher's Salary	600
7	Visit to other places	150
8	Administrative cost	150
	Amt. /Child/ per year	3000

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Also, here are few pics of the Literacy India center at Sector-23, Palam Vihar, Gurgaon. We got a chance to capture these pics when we went to Literacy India.

Classrooms at the Literacy India Center

What a serene surrounding for the children!!

Manish with children at Literacy India

Now computers are there for everyone to learn!

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Since many volunteers of AID Gurgaon are working in Evalueserve, it helped us in mobilizing the funds through the Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) initiatives. These kind of sponsorships help institutitions like Literacy India to impart education to underprivileged children.

People working in different companies through their CSR teams can try to raise sponsorships for such children or can even undertake to sponsor one child on their own. By raising funds from time to time we can ensure that though we may lack time to volunteer due to personal commitments, we can still make a difference in lives of these children. For any kind of details required related to sponsorships, please drop a mail at: gurgaon@aidindia.org

Do you like spending time with kids??

17/03/2007: It was a typical saturday morning. Weekend had started. This time other volunteers couldn't make it to Mobile Creches. Our new member, Sandra who is from Germany was really keen to go to Mobile Creches to meet the kids. So we reached Mobile Creches by 10:30 a.m. As there were only two of us and around 30 kids, it left us a bit perplexed as how to catch the attention of the kids. Normally we divide the kids in a group of 4-5 depending on availability of volunteers and go through what all they have learned in past few days and asking them few questions, clearing their doubts etc.


Sandra is still in the process of getting familiar with Hindi, so that she can interact more freely with the kids. So to keep the kids engaged we finally thought of teaching the kids how to answer if someone asks them in English, "What is your name?" The idea was that if Sandra asks them the same question, they would be able to smartly answer in English. All the children were told to sit in a circle and we started with a kid at random among them asking, "Tumhara naam kya hai?" He replied just by saying "Ajay". Then I had to tell him that you reply by saying, "Mera naam Ajay hai". He repeated it in a bit slow manner.


Then we asked the children that do they want to learn speaking in English and all replied in unison that they want to. So I asked Usha to stand and repeat with me that if someone asks her, "What is your name?" , then she should say, "My name is Usha". To that she tried to say slowly "My.......naam.......izz......Ushaa". But it was a good effort and she tried to improvise it too. Thereafter, each one of the kids was asked to stand and answer in the same way. Some of the kids were feeling too shy to speak. Some of the kids were saying in a very nice manner. For some it was sounding greek and latin. But at least it enabled to catch their attention.


Meanwhile some of the children were playing with Sandra, and were saying ,"Didi, Idhar aao naa!". Sandra really likes to be with these kids and even kids want her to teach Hindi quickly :-) . They were teaching her that a Cat is called "Billi" in Hindi and a Rabbit is called "Khargosh".


Later on we asked two of the kids to come at the center of circle, and to follow the simple exercise:

Ajay: "What is your name"?
Suraj: "My name is Suraj".
Suraj: "How are you?"
Ajay: "I am fine. Thank you."

Many of the children repeated this exercise. Few of them got a bit stuck while trying to repeat the sentences. Some displayed amazing confidence.



But it left me wondering that how much effort it requires in teaching just 4 lines of English to these kids. In the coming times how much learning and education(and the quality of education) is going to be possible for these children, when there parents have to keep moving from place to place every 2-3 years to a new construction site in search of some work. How many of these kids would be able to come out of the labour class, and get a chance like other privileged kids to learn computers and speak fluent English? Or would they become the next generation of labourers due to the lack of education even though they want to study and go ahead in life? Sometimes I really feel lucky that I was able to get a decent school education. How much education would be possible for these children? And what as educated individuals can we do for these children? Should we leave things for them on their fate?? Or can we come forward and do something worthwhile for them??

~~Nishank