~Pankhudi Delhi

Even though this is a combined update for 2 weeks, it’s going to be short because things have been slow. Only teaching has been gong on. Even the Pratham exercises have been on hold since Pratibha left. We need to shake things up a bit. Volunteer attendance has been rather slow with only 2-3 volunteers every week. Not all of the kids have been attending either, but that is mainly because they had summer holidays and some of them had gone to their villages.

A disturbing trend however is that the older kids seem to leave very quickly. We used to have a lot of 10+ year old kids, but now most of them prefer to go out and play rather than come study. Even the girls don’t come very often because they have to do the housework. Perhaps once we introduce Saturday classes, they’ll be able to come for those.

In other news, the Rotary Club has agreed to arrange a health camp for the kids on the 27th. We’ll be doing making arrangements when we go this Sunday.

Not a lot to report other than that. We’ll try and liven things up soon so they move at the pace at which they were earlier!

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For once, a post in time!:)

This week for a change we had too many volunteers and too few kids. Since it is summer, most of the kids have gone away to their native villages so we had only 14 kids and 6 volunteers. It was nice having fewer kids to manage. I think we actually managed to teach them something.

We had a meeting after class ended to see what could be done about getting more volunteers, starting Saturday classes, finding a place or just shelter even during the monsoons and structuring the classes better. Nitin’s leadership in conducting the meeting was sorely missed. Classes don’t seem to be getting structured really. It’s difficult planning anything because the number of children that turn up varies. Most of the time, we see new faces every week since more parents are realizing that we’re serious and the kids enjoy themselves so even parents’ of very young kids are sending them to us. I feel bad telling them not to come but some kind of solution will have to be devised so that we get limited number of kids who want to study since we have limited volunteers and resources.

Everyone’s been a bit busy with work so Pankhudi has been put on the back burner for a lot of us which is understandable. We need to think about tackling our major problems now though because the phase where we were just happy about attendance is over, and we need to start seeing results. The content team has mailed everyone new content for the classes so hopefully once that is implemented, things will be better. 

P.S: It was Pratibha’s last class as a volunteer for a while since she will be going back to her hometown and will then leave for Wharton Business School in a couple of months. We wish her the very best in everything she does!

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Match oops sorry, class cancelled due to rain.

p.s: I’ve been waiting to writing that since it got cancelled:D Anyway, we really need a better place to teach so we don’t get rained out like this. This will happen more regularly once the monsoons start.

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Well, it was quite normal on the 1st. We had our weekly Protsahan activity. We’re thinking of starting classes on Saturday evenings as well. The only problem is volunteers. The attendance on Sundays has also dropped drastically, we have barely 2-3 volunteers these days which makes teaching very difficult. The kids become difficult to handle and because they aren’t getting enough attention from us, they also tend to lose interest in their studying. Not a very good situation. We’re brainstorming to improve that.

Anyway on the 1st, we had class. Didn’t do Roly Poly and the other exercises since Pratibha wasn’t there and the attendance was relatively low. Nitin distributed the photos he’d taken of everyone at the zoo and the kids were all very excited to get them. Even kids who hadn’t gone for the trip wanted photos of the others as keepsakes.

On the 8th also things were fairly normal. Because of low attendance, not a lot is happening during class in terms of furthering the protsahan activity. We have discussions through e-mail and we’re planning a meeting soon, but things are a low right now. We need more people! Anyone listening?

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Again 2 weeks reporting at one shot. I really need to become more regular with this!

To be fair, 18th May wasn’t very eventful to begin with. We had 3 volunteers and 23 kids which was a bit of a handful but somehow we managed. Teaching went on as usual followed by the usual ‘Roly Poly’ and the other exercises from Pratham which all the kids and Pratibha enjoyed very much:D. A mention here, Pratibha-one of our most regular volunteers, has gotten admission into Wharton Business School for an MBA. It’s brilliant news for her, and I’m sure I speak on behalf of everyone when I say congratulations, but we’ll miss having her around at Pankhudi Delhi when she leaves.

This Sunday was quite interesting, and a few things happened that made me feel good about the progress we’ve made. The first thing was that when I reached the slum, I saw that some of the kids had spent the morning cleaning up the area we teach in. It was clear they had taken a lot of pains because the whole area was spotless which was really wonderful. Some of the younger girls said later that they’d done it, which made me feel good about the feeling of ownership and interest they were having in the classes. The other thing was, that it was one of the kids’ birthdays and the mother wanted us to be part of the celebrations. She invited us to their house, they had music on, she made sure we had something to eat and drink, and everything. Everyone else from the slum was there and they treated us like we were one of them which felt very nice.

Other than that classes went on as usual. We had 2 new volunteers who seemed to like it, and promised to come again next week. Lets hope they do. We’re having a bit of a debate about how exactly to go about distributing the clothes, toys and books that we’ve received as donation in the slum. We were wondering who to give what and how. We thought we might give the clothes to these kids from another slum who were much worse off than the kids from ours, and the toys as prizes to the kids over time. The books we could use for our teaching purposes and give some to the older girls. This is just a suggestion so if anyone else has ideas, they’d be very welcome!

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Not a lot to report. We were a little bit short of volunteers on Sunday, 3 volunteers to 23 kids:) It was a bit difficult to focus on any one child properly, but we managed somehow and class went on all right. The children are really becoming enthusiastic with new kids coming every week. Once we figure out the details about training the older girls, things will be a lot better, because now the response from the kids is there, response from the volunteers is there, all we need is a bit of organized activity which is also slowly happening. The trip to the zoo confirmed that we can pull this off very well, it just needs some time!

On a more general note, we had a PR cell conference this week. It went off well, with all the chapters reporting on their progress so far.

In other news, we’ve changed our timings from 9:45 to 12:45 because it was getting quite hot sitting in the open, and we needed to finish early so that no one (most likely the volunteers ) got sick. We’re talking about having some kind of temporary shelter put up there, like a tent or something. If anyone else has suggestions about what else we can do to get a proper space for us to teach, let us know!:)

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Ugh just wrote out a whole post which got deleted coz my internet connection broke!:( Its the universe’s way of punishing me for slacking in my duties past 2 weeks I suppose! This update of last week and the week before is long overdue.

On the 28th of April, class went on as usual along with the usual Pratham exercises in the end which the kids were very excited about as always. We had a new volunteer as well as a guest-Ram Kumar from Bangalore who participated in the teaching and told us about the activities done by the Bangalore chapter. I found it quite interesting and I think if we did this more often, a volunteer exchange of sorts, it could be quite useful to the guest and host chapters. Just reading about different chapters’ activities isn’t really enough. Participating in them and offering feedback based on past experience would be more helpful!

Last week was probably more interesting still. After class, a meeting was held between the volunteers and the parents of some of the kids where they were updated about our progress so far and our issues and future plans. They also got a chance to offer their feedback on the way we conducted our activities at present, and our plans. A lot of good ideas emerged from the same. More about that tomorrow once I meet everyone to know what happened. The volunteers also had a chat with some of the older girls who have agreed to teach the younger kids on a regular basis. An incentive system has to be created on the same.

 Will definitely be more regular now (something I said last week, but this time I intend to do for sure:) )Any suggestions on current and future plans will be very welcome! 

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As Nitin very rightly said, there are probably very few Sunday mornings better spent than this one where we celebrated Pankhudi’s foundation day with the kids. We’d been promising them a picnic for a very long time, and since the cricket match wasn’t working out we figured a trip to the zoo would be fun too. It was a very well planned outing despite the short time it was done in. The major planning took place at our quarterly meet last Sunday and a few mails during the week. It just goes to show that you can do anything if you’re serious about it. 

Anyway since Pankhudi Day was a Friday and not everyone could make it, we figured Sunday would be a better day. We gathered at the slum at 8:30 and were immediately surrounded by the kids. They were all dressed in their best clothes and raring to go. However last minute permissions from parents took time and we managed to leave at 9:30 AM. It was a good thing that we’d scheduled it early morning, because the day was already starting to get hot and the number of visitors increased significantly as the day wore on so the chances of losing the kids were higher (that was one of my biggest fears about the trip:P). By the time we’d reached there (after losing the way a couple of times. Mostly my fault:) ) the kids were extremely excited. But what was really great was how well they behaved themselves despite their excitement.

The older kids took really good care of the younger ones. One thing I noticed in fact was that there was this one older kid who’d hang around while we taught the others, and not only would he not sit for the class himself, he’d try to convince the younger kids to come play and not study either. I’m glad to say that they didn’t listen to him though they seemed to look up to him, probably because he was older. However, he’s been coming for class himself for the past few weeks without us having to even talk to him about it. He does his best to learn. Even for the trip, he wasn’t going to come, someone just asked if he would like to and he agreed. Not only that, he took excellent care of some of the youngest kids. It is really heartening to see this kind of change taking place with these kids even if we aren’t directly responsible for it. Another older kid asked if he could come along and even though we were initially hesitant, later we were glad of his help because he was extremely responsible and made sure the kids under his charge had fun but were with the group all the time. He refused however to accept the food we’d gotten for the kids or the icecream, which made me a bit curious as to what the reason for that was. Did he think he was too old for it? Pride? Don’t know.

It was a really good day. Everyone was tired by the end of it. We’d managed to see almost all the animals at the zoo. The kids seemed to have had fun. Namita and the others made sure they taught the kids as we walked through the zoo. The kids were asked to repeat the names of the animals in English and in Hindi several times so they’d remember. The mother of one of the kids had come along with us and she seemed to have fun as well as a couple of older girls. Rashmi and Reema planned the food very well, and the kids were very good about throwing away the garbage at the end of the meal. All in all a very successful outing, and hopefully just the first of many more to come.    

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Quite an eventful day. It was the day before Ram Navmi, and when we got to the slum, none of the kids were there which was quite abnormal. We asked some ladies and they said the girls had all gone for Kanjak or Kanchan or something. (Sorry to sound like such an angrez, but I’ve never been able to understand what that word is though I used to go to friends’ houses for it when I was younger).Anyway so they said the kids would probably not come that day so we were wasting our time waiting for them. We decided to wait there anyway because we had our first quarterly meet scheduled for later so we couldn’t leave. We were glad we waited because 15 minutes later at least 10 of the kids came. It was a lot lesser than normal but at least they came. Of course because of the meet, the number of volunteers was higher than usual so each of us taught 1-2 kids each which is always good.

We went over basic english, maths and hindi as usual. We skipped over the Pratham exercises and content because the number of kids there was rather less. It feels so good when you’re teaching the kids something new and you can see them understand what you are saying. Of course it is equally frustrating when you do something over and over and they don’t get it or worse still they refuse to try even. Many of them feel more comfortable doing things they already know so that they can get it right and can get a ‘good’ from us. It gets difficult convincing them to try something new sometimes. Anyway, I taught two 7 year old kids simple addition trying to use my fingers to demonstrate. It took some time but I think at least one got it for sure, and the other one seemed to know what he was doing at least half the time which was a start. Things should be better once we get proper content and regular teachers because we can teach them things regularly instead of them doing different things every week depending on who their teacher is.    

We went to Reema’s house for our quarterly meet after that. It was very productive primarily because Nitin had prepared a very comprehensive handout for each of us that discussed Pankhudi’s origin, its organizational structure, our Delhi’s chapters history and present activities as well as our plans and predictions for the future. It was a very well thought out document and because of that we managed to finish everything we had on the agenda. Nitin’s efforts were sincerely appreciated. Primary topics for discussion included our planned slum clean up drive, our plans for protsahan i.e. our regular teaching activities and the trip to the zoo we have planned for this Sunday.

This Friday Pankhudi turns 3 years old, so to celebrate the event we’re planning to take the kids to the zoo on Sunday. We have about 15 kids and 10 volunteers coming for the event. It should be a lot of fun!:)  More about that after it happens. Congratulations Shahzad and everyone else in the Parivaar! 3 years and still going strong. Hope everyone has a great weekend celebrating!

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