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BANGALORE |
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Feature |
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We have started teaching two new computer
classes (std. VIII and IX) adding more fun to our programme. It was
heartening to see that all the students are performing well. Std. VII
students are doing extremely well at computers. They have become comfortable
with all sorts of calculations in Microsoft Excel and editing in Microsoft
Word. It was heartening to see them writing letters in Microsoft Word. |
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News |
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Shree Ramana Maharishi Academcy for Blinds
(SRMAB) has arranged extra space for computer lab. Now, we have 2 computer
labs with a total of 20 computers for the children. As a result, managing
15-20 students at a time has become much easier with extra space and new
computers. |
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Activities |
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Vote of Thanks |
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WANTED |
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Looking for JAWS license to replace the
trial version. |
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MUMBAI |
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Feature |
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The
feature of this month was the Republic day function that was held on 26th
January at Lions Club, Kurla. Students of ~Pankhudi participated in various
song and dance activities. This function gave ~Pankhudians a good platform to
showcase their cultural skills and volunteers also used it to spread the
message of education among children’s parents. The event was graced by Lions
President Mr. Kanti Jain and Lions mr. Ashok Joshi, Lion Mr. L.N. Sharma and
Lion Mr. Ugamraj. The guests were welcomed by Pankhudi Foundation President
Mr. Shahzad Wakeel who also took charge of taking the event through. |
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News |
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A ~Pankhudi volunteer meet is scheduled to
be held on the 2nd Saturday of every month. This meeting will help us to
envision useful ideas to further strengthen our activities. |
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Activities |
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English
has been identified as the weak link among students and
hence a lot of emphasis is being laid on improving students reading and
writing skills by conducting periodic reading and dictation tests. Performer(s) of the Month
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Vote of Thanks |
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WANTED |
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New volunteers to participate in classroom
teaching and other related activities. |
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PUNE |
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Feature |
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~Pankhudi Pune kicked off the 2009 in a great
fashion with three major events, Movie Theatre Visit, Circus Visit and
Republic Day celebrations. Protsahan kids relished the screening of ‘Jumbo’
at Adlabs on 1st January. |
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News |
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There is a substantive
improvement in the Protsahan weekday (school dropout) children. They have
started showing interest towards study. Their attendance has improved over
the last few months. At ‘Nachiket Balgram’, organized teaching activities is
being continued. |
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Activities |
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Movie Theatre Visit ~Pankhudi Pune children enjoyed the screening of the movie ‘Jumbo’ at
Adlabs on 1st January to kick off the New Year in ‘Jumbo’ style. All
the 10 kids (from dropout batch) had splendid time while watching the movie
with 3 Protsahan teachers (Ms. Swati Kshirsagar, Ms. Gauri Pagare, Ms. Gauri
Udhade) and 2 ~Pankhudi volunteers (Aabha, Sheetal). We took the kids to
McDonalds after the movie where they had a real gala time. Circus Visit ~Pankhudi Pune team along with a couple of new volunteers (Aditi,
Nitin, Niranjan, Dimple, Madhuri, Savita, Pallavi Bakre and Pallavi Oak)
organized a trip to Rambo Circus on 25th January. All the children
had hilarious time at the show.
Following are a few quotations of the kids (translated to English)
when they were asked “How boring was the event”? “Aapan sagale ithun nighaalo naay kaa
bus madhi, tyevhaa malaa aawadla, mang circus madhi pan aawadla sagla, aani
mag parat aalo bus madhi tyevhaapan aawadla. Sagale yetaanaa gaani mhanat
hote, naachat hote bus madhi, tyevhaa majaa aali. Malaa bore naay zaala didi”
{ “We all left from home in a bus, and I liked that, and then we all
watched the circus, and I liked that, and then we all came back in the bus,
and I liked that a lot. We all sang and danced in the bus. I liked it all! I
did not get bored at all!”} Most of the kids enjoyed the most unlikely
part of the event- the bus ride back home, the most. Others also liked the
snacks served. Republic Day Celebrations ~Pankhudi Pune celebrated 60th Republic Day with Protsahan kids with
the help of TCS Pune. Children enjoyed various competitions targeted to
nourish their artistic skills. Young children (std. I - V) participated in
singing, dancing and poetry competitions while the elder group (std. VI -
VIII) were more enthusiastic in writing essays. Prizes were distributed to
the winners. Winners of the Essay Competition were Mahesh, Tushar and Poonam. Top
two performers among the younger kids were Aashiq and Swati. Performer(s) of the Month Ruby – Planned and
executed Circus for the Protsahan kids, contributed to the Protsahan weekend
batch significantly. Purva – Contributed
substantially to the Protsahan weekday batch. |
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Vote of Thanks |
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~Pankhudi Pune was overwhelmed by the help and support from many people
without whom our activities would not have been possible. We are greatly
thankful to
We are also thankful to all ~Pankhudi Pune volunteers who planned and
executed the event with great love and passion for the welfare of the
children. Especially, we thank
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WANTED |
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DELHI |
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News |
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We are excited to report that the
children’s education at Priyanka Camp, Okhla Modh slum is progressing with great
enthusiasm from both children and ~Pankhudi members. Children are learning
more via new curriculum created by the Content Cell by their teacher Ms.
Aasmeen at the slum. We are seeing a dramatic change in their English skills.
They seem to enjoy learning new things and are excited to come for class and
show off what they have newly learnt. They seem to be becoming comfortable
with English. |
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Activities |
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Protsahan activities continued with full force.
We visit every Sunday to test the children on what they learn with Ms.
Aasmeen during the week, and teach them basic conversation skills (learning
to say their name, what fruits they like, the colours they like etc.). The
daily teaching program recently implemented is going very well. The older
children are learning phonetics and how to create words using the basic
sounds, while the younger children are being taught their alphabet and basic
writing. Our activities have been boosted by several new volunteers over the
past few months. |
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Vote of Thanks |
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We are
greatly thankful to Ms. Aasmeen who is working hard with the children to
improve their skills. Her dedicated efforts are paying off as children showed
a big improvement in English. |
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WANTED |
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Education system in India
and the changes that need to be made Views of Mr. Abhishek Shenoy, Volunteer, Pankhudi Mumbai |
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“We don't need no education We dont need no thought control No dark sarcasm in the classroom Teachers leave them kids alone Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone! All in all it's just another brick in the
wall.” Pink Floyd says it the best. And how true can
it get. As I type this article, the video of this famous song flashes through
my mind –A lad gets scolded at because he was writing poems in class. As the
video progresses, school kids pass through an assembly line and turn into
puppets. This is what we have been for all these
years with regard to the education system in our country – Puppets. We have
been nothing but victims of this education system and now we are as good as
shredded bits of paper. A lot of people brag about how good the education system
in India is and so on. Yes. I agree. We have a very high level of education
system as compared to other countries. And that is one of the reasons Indians
are never turned down when they apply to universities in other countries. It
is said that the amount of competition here amongst students is the highest
in the world. An Indian is always involved in any major
scientific/technological event that takes place nowadays. But has this been
the result of our education system or the efforts that have gone into making
this possible? This is a question worth pondering on. Sadly but true, our education system has
been a complete mess. From the time we enter into kindergarten till the time
we graduate, things never look stable. In school, students are subjected to
tremendous pressure nowadays. There is cut throat competition amongst
students and everyone is concerned only about one dreaded word “Marks”. In
all this competition, noone really bothers about the quality of education.
How do kids in the 10th and 12th standards study for their exams nowadays?
They go to classes, borrow notes and study only those notes that can help
them ace their exams. When we get our 10th std and 12th std. results, do we
really care about how much knowledge we have and are we worth passing out? We
don’t. If these marks are sufficient to get us admission into a good college,
nothing like it! This is what our education system has done to us. The level
of competition is so high that there is no time to think about the quality of
education and the quality seems to be detiorrating with time. With the
exceptions of a few institutes like the IIT`s and IIM`s, the rest of the
institutes are in a complete mess. And the IIT`s and IIM`s are running away
leaving all the others far behind. If our schools and colleges are in a
complete mess you can imagine the condition in municipal schools. As I conducted the quiz competition on 14th
November for the students in ~Pankhudi, it was shocking to see that 8th and
9th std students take so much time to answer simple questions like,”Who is
the prime minister of India?”, “What is India`s national sport?” etc. This
defines it. I wonder what their teachers must be teaching them. Their books
are not covered properly, pages are torn etc. Their handwriting also speaks
volumes about the quality of education in their school. Some of them can’t
even spell simple words like potato, carrot etc. being in the higher classes.
It’s a very sad state and to make it even worse, students have also not yet
realized what kind of mess they are in. They behave as if its an obligation
on their part to go to school. They do not realize the value of learning and
we cant blame them for this. Our education system is the one to blame and
noone else. The desperate need of the hour is a transparent
education system. First and foremost, we need to have a transparent admission
system. Only those who deserve a seat should have the right to take that
seat. Sadly so much corruption exists nowadays that getting a seat has become
as difficult as climbing Mount Everest even for those students who do
exceedingly well in their exams. Parents spend sleepless nights thinking on
how to land a seat for their child even if the child is a 90 percent-er. This
frustration is then let out on the child who is forced to study for endless
entrance exams and attend endless interviews. This in turn puts tremendous
pressure on the child and he/she ends up taking drastic steps which are in
turn reflected on the increasing number of suicide cases among children that
appear in newspapers nowadays. We need to learn things more practically.
Sadly such things don’t seem to exist nowadays. Even after I have graduated,
I still feel that I have spent 4 worthless years in Engineering. I still feel
that anyone can land up with an Engineering degree. All you need to have is a
couple of notes of some stupid class, the capacity to learn by-heart and
that’s it! You can easily score a distinction in Engineering without much
effort at all. But is it really worth it? Is this how we define education?
Sadly but true this is how it actually is. People who try to sit and
understand the matter in their books are always looked down upon nowadays.
They are mocked at and others believe that such people are fools to sit and
study in that way. More practical oriented exams should be organized as these
exams test the true mettle of the student. We need to have teachers whom we can
idolize and sadly very few of these exist nowadays. We need teachers who can
relate things practically and give us more practical oriented knowledge. We
need people who can look more into a futuristic point of view rather than
looking at the “examination” point of view. Anyone lands up being a teacher
or a professor. I have friends who always believe that teaching is the last
option if they don’t land up with a job. The importance of a teacher in a
student’s life is slowly depreciating day by day. Teachers complain that they
are not paid well. This gets reflected on the paper corrections. Even after
giving their board/university exams really well, students spend sleepless
nights hoping that they would pass. Its impossible to believe that even if
you are cent percent sure of passing in a subject, you can land up failing.
And the procedure after that is terrible. Taking endless rounds of the
college or university and by the time the revaluation results are out, you
would have already given your re-exam. This tells the sorry state of our
system. As for municipal schools, sorry to say that
these schools are in a terrible state. The government needs to allocate more
funds and revenue to these schools. And more importantly such schools need to
have better and focused teachers. Sure the government can pay these teachers
more for the increased workload that these teachers are subjected to. In such
schools we need teachers who can drill the importance of studying and
education in these students. More importantly, these teachers should have the
qualities that enable students to look upto them. Teachers should be able to
transform the student into a person who can be looked upto and respected in
society. And if we want to see these kids being the future of this country,
we need to do this desperately. And what’s more? .We need to do it fast. You can write endlessly on this topic but
it is said that “empty vessels make a lot of noise”. We can make all the
noise but that’s not what we are here for right? We as ~Pankhudians may not
be able to change the education system but we can sure make a difference in
some way. Each ~Pankhudian should have his/her own education system. Let us
all take it up as a challenge and ensure that the children whom we teach end
up becoming the best in the country. Let us all ensure that they achieve
their goals. If we can do this we can sure add millions of feathers to our
cap. Let’s leave the education system aside. Many people have blabbered on
this topic for millions of years and several articles have been written on
this never ending topic. But some things never change, you agree right? As the famous Mark Twain puts it, “Many
public-school children seem to know only two dates--1492 and 4th of July; and
as a rule they don't know what happened on either occasion.” This sums it up! |
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Submitted by PR Reps,
Pankhudi Foundation Delhi: Ms. Vidha Jain Bangalore: Mr. Vaibhav
Choudhary & Mr. Ram Kumar Pune: Mr. Vinay Golecha Mumbai: Mr. Abhishek
Shenoy Edited by Kumar Varoon
(Minnesota, USA)@ News-Desk Pankhudi Foundation Designed by Amrit Vatsa
(Bhubaneshwar, Orrissa)@ Design-Cell Pankhudi Foundation |
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www.pankhudifoundation.org |
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