Pankhudi Foundation Blog

Aditya Karandikar and Mukta Matta visited Somaiya and Swami Vivekanand on Thursday, 5th August  with the intention of getting college students to volunteer for Pankhudi.

In K.J. Somaiya college, they met with the Dean, Prof Sudha Gupta. She was keen to call Pankhudi over to make a presentation to a larger crowd on some event/occasion. Later,  a short meeting with Prof. Bhavani of KJ management school was held and the Pankhudi brochure was shared with him.  Sonam Goel, a management student, has agreed to take this forward and help  with increasing Pankhudi’s visibility amongst college students. The Mumbai team will get in touch with her so as to have a continued association with the administration of KJ.

An email will also be sent to Prof. Radha Iyer who has indicated her interest in helping Pankhudi out.

Again, from the engineering stream, a student representative, Vidit shah introduced Aditya and Mukta to the student council. A 15 minutes presentation was held for the students.

After covering ground in Somaiya, Aditya and Mukta visited Swami Vivekanand College, where they met with Milind Shirish, the NSS student co-ordinator. The main in-charge, Mr. Sanjay Premchandani had already left for the day.

The Principal, Mrs. Phadnis was very helpful and showed interest in Pankhudi’s activities. She directed the team to Prof. Deepta Dasgupta who handles credit courses.  After making a presentation to her, the team asked ways in which Vivekanand college could help in Pankhudi’s initiatives. Mrs. Deepta said that she would speak to the college authorities and see if the college students could be given extra credits for volunteering with Pankhudi.

Overall, the drive ended on a positive note. We look forward to maintaining the interaction so that it materializes in additional volunteers for us.

On 8-8-09 we had our first interaction session with the students in Light House School for Blind The students, as expected were not really in to attend another class after their hectic schedule in the first half. Obviously, who has ever liked extra classes?

There were 12 students from the 9th std initially, who were later joined by the 11th std girls making it a class of 18 students in all. There were 15 girls, out of which 4-5 were shy and did not open up while the rest were easy to strike a conversation with. There were only three boys, who were willing to open up but only when approached personally.

We started off by asking each of the students to introduce themselves while mentioning their name, where they come from and their favorite subject(preferably in English) While a few were shying out from speaking those few words of English, there were others who spoke quite confidently.

The class got me nostalgic as I thought of myr own school days. What struck me then was, I realized that there is absolutely nothing that made these kids different or not normal. There were the girls in the back benches who were giggling and making jokes. The front benchers talked but only in whispers and their self made sign language of nudging followed by giggling. The 11th std girls on the left were sitting comfortably and making their own judgments and remarks on what was going on then. The boys quietly sat and were probably thinking when will somebody talk something that actually makes some sense

The students had their own ambitions and had absolutely no problem sharing with us outsiders. Few of them wanted to become subject teachers, one of them a music teacher, one of them an air hostess and one of them even wanted to be a cricketer.

We discussed about what they wanted from us and how we could help them with it. One of the boys placed his concern about how he can improve his efficiency if he could use computers. He remarked that ideally he takes 3-4 minutes to write a sentence on paper. But, using a computer, he could write a sentence in around two minutes. Everyone really wanted to learn computers and were actually looking forward to it which is quite understandable. How do you any of us can survive if we are not allowed to access our lappy or desktop huh?

By the end of almost two hours, we were discussing about how we could adjust our sessions according to their convenience as they had their regular classes, their hobby class and their private tutions that needed their attention. We were relieved that almost everyone wanted to attend our teaching sessions We were thankful for they had very discreetly allowed us to enter their territory and help them meet their goals and ambitions. Now this feeling that we had….that of an accomplishment…was extraordinary

~Contributed by Anjita

Our volunteer base has expanded. Anjita (from Hyd Chapter), Sujit, Sumit Bhagat, D K Sahu and Sayantan (another bengali speaking member… ) joined us ever since we had the first meeting.

We tasted partial success at Lighthouse for the Blind, Kalighat. Amol, Anjita, Sumit, Sahu and Sayantan visited the school on 12th July. A positive response from the principal encouraged us more to probe into the situation. As we sensed scope for contribution, we decided to prepare a proposal for kind of activities we can perform there. We observed a lacking infrastructure and level of English and Computers teaching at the school. Even the kids we interacted with were highly enthusiastic and eager to learn.

Neeraj, Shashank, Devendra and Anjita visited the school again on 15th July to understand the detailed state of Computer and English facilities. Some snaps to give an idea.

Lab has only two computers but with braille printers

A glimpse of class room

Books printed on in-house printer

We found that the school has only two computers (good thing is that they ave braille printers). So we need to get more computers for the activity (Action Item!). Also kids can’t converse in English although they understand some of it. At present we have only two Bengali speaking volunteers so we need more local volunteers (Action Item!). There is enough space for conducting classes. A new building is also comping up and principal sir said the computer lab expansion plans can be carried out there.

We finished off the detailed proposal document in time on Saturday, 18th July and presented it to Principal sir at school who looked pleased at it.

Next!!! We wait for the approval due coming Friday and start the action. In the mean time we need to start working on other action items.

~Contributed by Neeraj

For update on further work being done, please visit “Prayaas Community” on orkut. This project is now managed by students/residents of
IIIT Allahabad (http://www.iiita.ac.in ).
http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Community.aspx?cmm=27505909

PR Cell,
Pankhudi Foundation

Well it is with great delight we wish to say that the Allahabad Team indeed made the 18th of April 2007 i.e Pankhudi’s Birth Anniversary a real special day.

The students who come under tha Protsahan program(rural literacy) were allowed to enter the IIIT Allahabad campus for a small tour.

The kids were first taken to a small garden, then to the lecture rooms where they were overjoyed to see and feel the atmosphere in which we study. They also checked out the lab computers with great awe. Later they were taken to the college library wherein they got so see hundreds and hundreds of books. Roaming around the clean and green campus was indeed like a picninc to them.

Finally we took them to the faculty house that is Mrs. Padma Mam’s house where there was a fun interactive session.Many children recited poems, songs. Even Prof U.S. Tiwary( Dean, Academic Affairs) also presentedthe students with a motivating songs. At the end , ice creams and fruits were distributed among the children before bidding their good byes to the college campus.

All in all it was a very enjoyable day for the children as well as the volunteers… Pankhudi Didi will indeed hold special place in their hearts forever!!!

Regards

Arti Chhajta

Team Allahabad

On the 19th of March, we made our first visit to Sahyog after the vacations. The members who visited were: Ishant, Chandrashekhar Meena, Vipin, Shruti, Vibhuti and Yanu. It was like a revision session wherein the girls just brushed up whatever had been taught to them previously. Basics like handling folders, opening files and packages like MS Office were revised. Some the the main and handy aspects of MS Word, Paint, Excel etc have been taught to them and an effort is being made to make them completely comfortable and good at handling them. The queries and doubts of the students there are quite encouraging as it gives an insight into how fast they are picking things and how well they are understanding. As of now, we will continue to teach them the same stuff before getting onto a tougher level. Hope to get in some ideas on what to teach next once we finish with the basics

Arti Chhajta

~Pankhudi Allahabad

On 5^th February 2007 we made a visit to Sahyog . We just carried on the momentum , teaching the girls there the various functionalities of a computer. We covered lessons on MS Word, MS Excel, Paint and the general use of computer for entertainment etc. Lessons on the hardware of a system were also taken.

What was delightful to see was the interest that all of them have to learn and practice. Soon they will be handed over  their CPU (which has currently gone for repairing) and that will help them to practice and retain whatever we teach them. Many of them have have picked up MS Word and Paint very well.

Next visit , we would like to teach them in more depth as far as MS Office is concerned. All in all, this initiative to introduce them to computer is really turning out to be a success.

Regards

Arti Chhajta

~Pankhudi Allahabad

On the 26^th of January, 2007 the students of Protsahan were taken to Kendriya Vidyalaya, Jhalwa, Allahabad  to witness the Republic Day celebrations.The chief guest  for the event was Dr. U.S. Tiwary (Dean – Academic Affairs,IIITA).

The students of KV presented the audiences with various performances. There was a patriotic group song, drill presented by the scouts, a speech on the importance of the Republic Day and to top it all a Punjabi folk dance performed by the girls. The students of Protsahan had a wonderful time, got a lot to learn about the significance of the Republic Day.

At the end , Hima Bindu ma’am distributed sweets among the children and had a fun session asking them what had they finally learned about the Republic Day of India. It was an attempt on our part to educate the children about their country’s glorious history! All in all it was an enjoyable learning experience for the kids!

Regards

Arti Chhajta

~Pankhudi

Team Allahabad

Well here comes New Year and new zeal to make a difference in people’s lives… this is what we have been doing so far and pledge to continue this endeavour!

The literacy program (Protsahan) was functional throughout the vacations with just a one week gap in between. The classes resumed in full flow from 28^th December 2006. The program has indeed gained momentum and every other day we have requests for new admissions.

It was decided to visit Sahyog and MoC this week and plan was to have a small “New Year celebration “sort of a thing but unfortunately that could not materialize because of the unavailability of conveyance. The visits will be rescheduled for next week.

There are some new ideas that we’ll be working on shortly :

1. In order to accommodate new batch of students, a parallel session of “Protsahan” will be conducted.

2.Attempt to provide computer education to girls at Sahyog. Also use of computers will be started to teach students at “Protsahan” ( bi weekly).

3.We would also like to promote Pankhudi in other colleges thereby spreading the wings of Pankhudi far and wide!

There are number of other projects , but need some time to analyse them before taking them up.

So that’s it for now.

Regards

Arti Chhajta

~Pankhudi

Team Allahabad

And yes it was a success… It was really a complacent feeling watching kids expressing mirth. The program started with a brief intro of Children’s Day by me. Then Padma Ma’am took the command and explaind the details of Children’s Day and Chacha Nehru.
The event proceeded with fun games as lemon spoon race, sack race, banana race, three leg race. We also had a special game in which each student at ~prayaas was paired with a faculty of IIITA. The co ordination was a fun to watch.

Also present were Bindu Ma’m, Shweta Ma’am, Soma Ma’am and Krishna Ma’am.
A lemon race round of the volunteers enkindled their childhood. We planned games for volunteers to but had to cut them short because of paucity of time.

After this fun surfeited session, magic show by Magician Ravindra Kumar was waiting for them. The sorcerous seeming tricks augmented by jokes made this experience memorable for the kids.

The event was followed by prize distribution to the winners and then choclates, biscuits and other refreshments were distributed amongst kids.

We extend our thanks to Ratnesh for organising refreshments and all the staff members for taking out time from their busy schedules.

The pics of the event can be seen at http://in.pg.photos.yahoo.com/~puneet.vijay84

Happy Children’s Day to everyone in parivaar

Regards,
Team Allahabad