~Pankhudi Delhi

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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Pretty good week as usual. Plans for the slum clean up are still underway. We were meant to have the cricket match between the kids from our slum and Pallavanjali but the weather had other plans. It rained cats and dogs all weekend so the match has now been postponed to the weekend after next.

Other than that, Nitin thought we should have a quarterly meet of all the volunteers from our chapter to get everyone up to date on whats being going on and what is still to be done, so that should hopefully happen next weekend. i think it’s a pretty good idea because we all need a day when we all meet and take stock of everything that’s happening at Pankhudi Delhi. 

18th April also marks the day Pankhudi was founded 3 years ago, so we’re all beginning to think of things we can do. We might just have the match then if the weather’s favourable or take the kids to the zoo or something.

The all cell meet is happening next month in Delhi so that should be pretty great:D. I’m sure I speak on behalf of all the volunteers from Delhi when I say that we’re really looking forward to welcoming everyone here. We hope everyone can make it!:) 

This Sunday we had class as usual. 7 volunteers, 14 kids which made for a pretty good volunteer-student ratio. It’s always better when we can give focused attention to a few children at a time so they can use it to clear their specific problems with their school work. We finished by doing some of the exercises suggested by Pratham and they were a big success. We began with teaching them simple sentences - I am Vidha, I am a girl, I study in class 5 etc. They also learnt to ask another person about themselves by adding ‘And you?’ after these questions. What was really interesting was that even though we didn’t tell them what ‘and you’ meant, most of them understood themselves because we gestured to ourselves when we said ‘I am a girl’ and to them when we said ‘And You?’. After the second or third round of this, they picked it up without us reminding them. One of them forgot to say ‘And you’ after saying she was a girl, and the next kid immediately said, “tune ‘and you’ nahi bola” so he waited till she’d said that before saying that he was a boy. Someone else said very comfortably, ‘and you, didi’ which showed she understood that the didi standing next to her now had to say that she was a girl. It was quite cool because you could almost see the light bulbs going off inside their heads (as Shaloo Ma’am would say:D). 

After that we did this little song with them that we’d also learnt from Pratham. The song was pretty simple, but the actions that went along with it made it a lot of fun for the kids. It had the kids perform the actions for various verbs such as ‘jump’, ‘eat’, ‘drink’, ‘clap’ everytime they chanted them as part of the song. Needless to say the kids had a blast jumping, dancing, clapping and pretending to eat and drink. They seemed to remember what they meant to, though I guess we’ll only know how much they retained next week. But overall the experience was very good, because every kid participated, even the ones that hadn’t come for the teaching part of the class. They seemed to enjoy themselves and feel proud when they remembered even a part of the sentence they were meant to say or even when they managed to repeat what we’d said correctly.  

We’ll be continuing this next week as well as talking to some of the older girls in the slum who can help us with teaching the younger kids on a more regular basis.

 Since I was in Mumbai last weekend, I wasn’t able to go to the slum on Sunday so I can’t really give a firsthand account of what happened. I can however give a brief update based on Nitin’s activity report. I seem to have missed a very interesting time. Petra, a woman who teaches at a nearby slum (Tarzan’s slum as well all like to call it) came to visit our slum and talk to us, as well as, the aunt of one of our new volunteers-Saumya. Both liked the work we were doing and Saumya’s aunt also helped us with teaching the kids. More on this soon after I get some more details from Nitin. (I miss one weekend and thats when the fun stuff happens!Not fair I tell you)

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Well here’s an update of what’s been happening with Pankhudi this week like we promised!

Things are getting quite busy. Lots of things happening! Besides our regular teaching activities at the slum, we’re also planning a cricket match between the kids from our slum (it’s funny how we all talk as though the slum is really ours:) It just feels like that now after working there all this time) and the Pallavanjali kids. All the kids are really excited about it, though I feel some of them are just happy about the outing and not the cricket. Oh well, whatever makes them happy!Some of the girls seemed to think that they may not be asked to come along coz it was cricket and they were girls, but I reassured them that they were very welcome. There is definitely this gender difference at the slum I’ve noticed. Whenever the girls don’t come to study on Sundays, I always see them cooking, washing clothes or taking care of the younger children while when the boys don’t come they’re generally playing cricket or marbles or something. I don’t know whether we’re meant to do anything about that, is it really our job to? I’m a very strong believer in gender equality so I think we should, but the parents may not really appreciate it. Hmm. Comments anyone?

Anyway, aside from planning the match, it was a pretty typical day at the slum today. We had 5 volunteers present-Nitin, Pratibha (both there on time as usual!), Naval, Neha and I. Its nice how even when a few people are unable to come these days, you don’t realize it as much because we have enough people to take their place! Its a very positive change and I hope it remains! The kids have finished with their exams so we all just worked with them in small groups of 3-4 as usual. It was productive, but hopefully once we implement the new content we got from Pratham, things should be even better.

Besides that, we’re also initiating a discussion about a slum clean up. There are large areas within the slum that are just filled with a lot of rubbish and lying unused because of that. We can even use them to set up a classroom for us if we can have them cleaned. We’re beginning with some research about how it can be cleaned. If we can manage to go ahead with it, it could mean a significant change for the way in which we organize our activities there.

We’ll keep everyone posted about how this goes. Advice from other chapters about the above would be very welcome.

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This blog has not been updated in a very long time so I’m glad that after some umm ‘persuasion’ from the PR cell we’ve decided to start writing here again. 

Pankhudi Delhi has been through a lot since the blog was last updated. The biggest change I suppose is that we no longer visit the Udayan Care orphanage. We have adopted a slum in Okhla Modh (New Friends Colony) instead and we visit it every Sunday to teach the children there basic english and mathematics.

Another big change is our team of volunteers. Having joined Pankhudi only 6 months back I’m not the best person to tell you about this. Reading the archives for the blog, I realized that I could only recognize 3 names out of all those mentioned so I’m assuming a lot of people who were here then aren’t anymore. We have a lot of new volunteers instead who will I hope write here themselves to talk about their experience with Pankhudi.

Other than that, things are still the same. We’re still all working together to help children who haven’t grown up with the privileges that we have. We’re still working as a team, no matter if we’re 2 volunteers or 20. We’re still having as much fun as we can doing it!

Now that everyone’s on the same page, lets get caught up everything thats been happening this past year. This is going to be brief. We’ll elaborate on it as we go along, and anything I’ve missed out, hopefully Reema will fill in.

a. We started at the slum by taking surveys to determine some basic details of the househlds- number of kids, their age, the number that went to school and where etc.

b. We started with basic teaching at a little temple inside the slum. We were asked to leave when the kids started becoming a bit of a nuisance to the people around. We are at present teaching in this open space near the main road which is a bit noisy, but is the best place we can come up with right now. We are still looking for a decent place that is near or preferably inside the slum, where we can store our material and create a classroom feeling.

c. We had a theatre group visit the slum with us for a few weeks and have workshops for the kids which they enjoyed a lot.

d. We visited Shaloo Ma’am, our mentor from Pallavanjali to get her advice on how to get organized and teach the kids in a way that they would learn and not just mug up. We also had a meeting with Mr. Chetan from Bharti Foundation who also offered us similar advice.

e. We’ve had training sessions with Ms. Fauzia and Mr. Dinesh from Pratham, another NGO in Delhi about how to train other teachers to teach the kids. Since we can only visit the slum on Sundays, we are trying to get the older children from the slum to teach the younger ones on a more regular basis.

f. We’ve had one sports event in collaboration with the kids from Pallavanjali and the Second Chance Home, and we’re planning another one for the end of this month.

g. Reema and Naval were our chapter and finance reps last year (I was never sure who was who). This year Nitin is our chapter rep and Naval is finance rep. They’re both doing a very good job of it.

h. AIM3 was held in Bangalore in December 2007. Nitin, Naval, Reema and Namita went. They came back very inspired so I’m sure it was very good. I didn’t get to go:(

Hmm I think thats broadly it. If I’ve missed out anything, I’m sure someone else will fill in. Will definitely be updating this a lot more from now on, so come back soon!

P.S: Anybody reading this who isn’t already a part of Pankhudi, come join us! We’re fun people! Leave a comment here or mail join@pankhudifoundation.org for more info!

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Deepti:

hi to all for most of the thhose ppl who were not regular in visitin udayan homes,i may sound as a newcomer in the field but for others m a knw name:)…m writin for the first time in the thread after a humble request frm Damyanti….so Damyanti here is my blog
…since i was wrkin with pankhudi frm a long time ..i was very comfortable in discussin the stuffs but to b very frenk i wann to confess tht mnot a person very comfortable with kidds so usually it was hard for me to mingle with those gals but by the time i found myself so happy with thm and can say today tht i just luv thm ….we were thr on tht rockin party ….cant imagine tht life can b so beautiful….as everybdy told tht we all njoyed alot…i cant write nethin else since i cant xplain the xperience…watchin thm dancin on kajrare kajrare ….tryin to copy perfactly makes me feel to stand on feet n try to help thm in performin some dancin steps…here i wann to tell tht i just luv dancin ….
after comin on the room i was not able to think nethin else..it was pooja’s sweet face which was revolvin all the time in my mind…its hard to blive for me tht i can b so touchy…so thts all i hav to say….c ya!!!

Damayanti:

I wud like to add sumthing to deepti’s comment…shorty after we reached there…lunch was already prepared..and we were invited to have the nice wonderful home food with the girls..I was simply awesome to have food altogether with the kids sitting on floor just like having langar..I wish I wud have taken camera to capture those moments..after food girls become hyperactive doing all kind of mischiefs like tearing all the decoration paper,balloon punturing competition..It was real fun. TAMBOLA was sumthing which cud make them sit for a while but cudn’t shut up their mouth…and we had B’day celebration after that…yummy cakes and hospitable children serving cake to everyone..then begun the dancing..hmm hard to believe that the girls can believe abhishek,aishwarya and amitabh exactly on the kajra song…but they did..…
and I wud like to add sum more to comments abt the dancing capabilities of basil and shaurya…Its bad that they were so willing to dance wid u and u denied them..I think children can sense who can dance and who can’t.

 Basil:

Allegations~~Counter-Allegations~~Note 4/24/2006 6:02 PM
But as The 3 ladies pointed out….we had a gr8 time there…I especially enjoyed the balloon crushing competition..was gr8!!!…and the way Shruti n Pooja were swaying to the music of Bunty aur Bubli…it was just wonderful…and it really made no sense for two pairs of “woody legs” to show their “alleged” dancing skils ( I can’t even dance as much as Brinda aunty did!!!!)…and in defense to Damayanti’s allegations….”The bacchaas made some judgemental errorzzzz…but they did come to u guys too didn’t they???
But..on the whole..we realy had a gr8 time there…a time worth cherishing…just one regret and a very BIG one..we all forgot the camera…

psssst..i missed one more thing..seems u guys did too…kindly re-read Deepti’s blog….especially the last lines!!!! Shaurya bhai!!!! We have proved ourselves innocent!!!!

Shaurya

i really feel bad to let those little kids down by not dancing wid them..but i wud have let them further down by showin them my dancing skills…believe me.
n as for now we already have someone who loves to dance n can teach them dance…thats deepti. infact u shud have done it that day..n saved us !!!!!

Team Pankhudi-Delhi

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(As posted by Divya in Orkut)

Sorry shaurya tried to write in JAVA n C++ but thn with the fear of becoming a star .. i dropped the idea.:(

Well friends it was a pleasure for me to b a part of ~pankhudi.Last time I initially found myself a bit confused in a way how to mingle with the rest but these gals are a real smart bunch and i no time i was thr enjying evry moment of the trip..( waise it was also my 1st trip to India Gate ) now cming to this sunday we were invited to a happening bday party and i must say all you guys who cud not make it u really missed smthng. The delicious cake yummy (sorry ),TAMBOLA keeping apart the cheating(I always had those numbers tht were never cancelled out) gals enjyd it..

But shaurya n Basil i must tell you you shud hv tried out yr talents thr.. to make it more clr to others Both of them are tooooooo gud at dance and believe me next time u wont b able to escape(mark these wrds u two).

Divya

Team Pankhudi-Delhi

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(As posted by Mitin in Orkut)

honestly…i like xpressing my feelings 2 some1 face-2-face rather than writing them down…still, aftr many requests frm many ppl, 2day i m finally sittin down 2 write my xperience…primarily coz organisin 2dayz visit was my responsibilty…ooooooooooooooops!!!!!!!!!!!!…its already 12:00…so yesterdayz visit

so…1st of all abt da kids…wat cute children, u’d think…rite?????…wrong!!!!!!!!…SHAITAAAN!!!!!!!!!!…sab ke sab…peechhe hi pad jaate hain…jaane hi nahi dete yaar…kheencte rehte hain…aaj meri shirt faad di…mummy!!!!!!!!!!!!

dear reema govil!!!!!!!!!!…whrever u r, mark my words…u made me join this pankhudi thing n so u r gonna buy me a new 1

on a serious note…2days visit was simply fabs!!!!!!!!!!…we 5 ppl (myself, rajan, sandeep, rashmi n another of my frnd named mukund) went frm sda whilst arjun joined us at santnagar directly…thr was another group of volunteers thr already n upon enquiring, i came 2 know tht they were late for thr shift n thtz y were still thr…so as a result, thr were more num of volunteers 2day at udayan than the num of kids…newyz, we took our positions n started targetting da usual suspects…i took charge of pratibha whz really pratibhashaali…taught her maths…sandeep taught rekha…shez really cooooooool…jyoti was as usual - her UNSUAL self…we ppl oughtta do sumthing abt her…she aint interested at all in studies…rajan tried 2 teach her but cldnt achieve much…as 4 sulochana, shez full of life n enthusiasm…hwever, her enthusiasm falls 2 an all-time low in context of studies…i asked rajan 2 teach her…he did 4 sumtime but finally she ran away frm him n then rashmi taught her…as 4 rashmi, she was also teachin some1 initially n thn sulochana joined her aftrwards…sorry but i cldnt remember the name of tht SOME1 gal…i m real bad at recalling names…pardon me plzzz

mukund taught lily…it was his 1st visit n he’d a blast thr…kids also loved him very much…arjun 2 taught some1 (sorry but i again 4got da name)…all in all it was a pleasant visit…aftrwards, almost all of us started tomfooling around n only rashmi was da 1 who was seriously teaching…finally, it was time 2 bid
adieu…thzt whn those little devils started pulling at my b’ful shirt

hwever, they were missin thr PRIME MINISTER…samajhdaar ke liye ishara hi kaafi hota hai!!!!!!!!!!…hope u understood…as 4 a particular PEELI WALI DIDI, i’d like her 2 start her visits too…she made me join pankhudi…now, i’ve bcome regualer n she irregular…m i so terrifying????????…i dont think so

newyz, if u ppl r still awake aftr reading all dis stuff, 1st of all my heartfelt regards 2 ya ppl…this is also 1 of da reasons y i dont start writing coz thn i cant stop writing…newyz, wld like 2 c others write thr xperience…especially rajan…he was totally a new guy 2day…not his usual serious self…n so kids were also freely interacting wid him unlike old times…n may pankhudi-members keep up da gud work!!!!!!!!!…so until our nxt rendezvous wid da kids, its ur temporary organiser signing off…tk care n njoy life ya all…cyao

Mitin Kumar

Team Pankhudi - Delhi

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