Pankhudi Foundation Blog

Pankhudi Mumbai conducted a two part survey in Suman Nagar area, Chembur on May 16th and 23rd.

The purpose of the initiative was to spread the word about Pankhudi’s classes and assess the educational/vocational needs of the target group.

The survey threw up some interesting pointers :

• Most family incomes ranged between Rs. 3,ooo to 10,000
• Non Pankhudi students – They hadn’t heard of Pankhudi’s activities earlier. A lot of them went to tuitions. Such families were very keen to enrol their wards for classes
• Among Pankhudi students, there was a unanimous feeling – English classes had been very helpful to all. They would love to learn more; especially, conversational English
• Most students expressed interest in learning computers
• Most students of SSC level weren’t sure about Career options available to them
• A lot of adults expressed their desire to learn and asked if Pankhudi would take up an Adult Literacy initiative too

The exercise was very helpful and will come in handy to increase the reach of the organisation.

*****

Mumbai Reps plan to meet up over the next few weekends and chart out the content for the academic year. More details on that, later.

A year has passed by but the efforts haven’t. In fact some of the good work done in the year 2009 is bearing results today. Pankhudi Bangalore takes this opportunity to thank its old representatives – Vaibhav,  Deeptangan, Lipika and Pravesh for their extra-ordinary commitment levels towards the Parivaar and expects the same from them in the near future.                              At the same time Pankhudi Bangalore welcomes the new representatives for the year 2010 –  Priyanka,  Anirudha, Minu and Aman and wishes them luck in their new roles. The entire team is hopeful of creating bigger milestones for the current year.

Recent developments from Delhi Chapter:

 Pukka Shelter : We have got a room in the slum on rent from pradhan where we can conduct our classes and any other activities we wish to organize. We will be conducting our classes from this Sunday onwards. Some of the articles we are in the process of arranging for the room are:

• Blackboard/ whiteboard and chalk/ markers,
• Mats,
• Shelfs/lockers to store our stationary materials etc.
• We also need a projector for showing some movies to the kids and educative clips, documentaries etc. to both kids and their parents.

Regular Health Camp: We are also in talks with an organization for conducting regular health camps and distributing medicines and other activities like imparting health education to the residents by documentaries, street plays and presenting to them the ways they can keep proper hygiene and sanitation in their slums.

Protsahan: There are a few girls in the slum who would be interested in teaching but they don’t have some prior teaching experience and hence we need to provide formal education training program to the girls. Employing the slum girls will serve two purposes. First, the slum people will realize that educating their kids is not a waste of time and money. Second, the slum girls have been through the stages through which the other younger slum kids are currently going through and hence the girls can prove to be better teachers for the kids.

Health camp at the slum was conducted successfully. We had SMILE foundation helping us with doctors and  mobile van carrying the equipments required for the general check ups.

The doctors provided medicines to the people and also did their blood tests apart from general check ups. Overall 98 people with genuine complaints from Priya Camp and Indira Camp along with our Priyanka Camp were examined.

We hope that we get into longer term alliance with SMILE Foundation for regular and overall health concerns of the camp.

We (along with SMILE Foundation) are conducting health camp at Priyanka Camp (Okhla Slum) this Tuesday. SMILE has agreed to send their mobile medical van to the slum on 9th February . The van will be there from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. The van operates as a mobile dispensary, has doctors and requisite medical equipment and does health check-ups. The camp is for both adults and kids from the slums of the nearby area.

As the health camp is on Tuesday and given that most of us have offices, so it is a request that anybody who can take out some time of their busy schedule to inform any of the following people about their availability to coordinate that day:

Vidha:09810401135

Sameer:09971219998

Vaibhav:09310121285

Swati:09999432693

Why should I work hard? Why should I struggle? Why should I put myself into any difficulty for the sake of any other person?

These questions, and our answers to them, are the basis for our entire approach
(motivation level) to work.

Prajnasya murkhasya ca karye-yoge
Samatvam-abhyeti tanur na buddhih

“When any work is done by an enlightened man or by and unenlightened man,
there is similarity with respect to the body (only) but not with respect to buddhi (reason and will)”

A sick child is nursed by the mother. Another sick child is nursed by a maid. The two actions are similar, but the mind behind those two actions are dissimilar.

The quality of an action is determined by the quality of the mind behind the action.

If the mind is inattentive, the the job is not done well. On the other hand, if the mind is attentive then the job is done well. If the mind seeks only the end result – i.e., marks, then a student’s quality of will be restricted to doing well in the exam. On the other hand if the mind seeks knowledge, with a short term goal of doing well in the exam then the student’s quality of study will accordingly be such that he of she has mastered the subject at hand.

Clearly, what the mind seeks determines the energy and efforts that goes beyond any action.

“What the mind seeks” can be put in management language as “compensation” or “pay off”.

What compensation we seek determines how we will work – the quality of our involvement, the depth of our struggle, our willingness to go beyond the call of duty, our capacity to act with integrity and boldness, our ability to set aside our ego and personal pride in favor of the purpose at hand.

In short, the “compensation” we seek determines the “depth of our involvement and commitment” to the work at hand.

Read i-become philosophy on http://ibecomethink.wordpress.com/

On the occasion of Republic day, we decided to spend the whole evening with the children at Suman Nagar.
The entire class was jam-packed with over 70 kids turning up.
One of our senior batch students, Sanjeevani had prepared a speech about the importance of celebrating this day. Everyone listened with rapt attention as she listed the principles on which our Constitution stands and which were embraced by the Indian Democratic Republic on 26th Jan 1950.

A few of our student performed a dance item they had practiced to the song “Vande Mataram” by A.R.Rahman. One of our volunteers standing at the back overheard that this performance had won 1st place and a cash prize of Rs. 501 when they had recently performed it at a competition.

Our attempts at screening a movie, unfortunately were greeted with chaos in the audience. The movie chosen for the occasion was the animation film “Happy feet”. Even though it was a thought provoking movie, we started screening the English version which some of the smaller kids could not enjoy.

At the close of the events, we distributed sweets. It was our first event of the New year and with great enthusiasm all the assembled volunteers voted to make the next event an even bigger success.

Just a general update on everything that’s happening behind (and front of) the scenes in Pankhudi Delhi. Things are moving forward, a little slowly but steadily.

1. Health Camp: We’re planning to hold a general medical check up for our kids sometime over the next 3 weeks. We need a doctor, medicines and to create health cards for each kid.

2. English teacher: Aasmeen will be going on leave to study for her board exams soon, and we think someone experienced would show better results for our kids. Finding someone who can come to the slum for approx 2 hours everyday to teach the kids is proving to be a bit problematic. We’re presently looking at other NGOs and colleges to get leads.

3. Maths Content – We’re trying to evaluate the kids and make sure they are in the right groups plus set up a regular content cycle and evaluation process.

4. Volunteer trip – We’re trying to plan a trip to Amritsar for all the volunteers soon

5. Shelter – The shelter is up but it will need some patching up soon plus we need to make it feel like more of a classroom.

6. Pankhudi photo gallery – Krishan has taken the responsibility of constantly updating the gallery

7. Kids’ Schools – Some of our kids might benefit from switching to private school. We need to study their current schools and see what we can do to improve their education.

On 3rd Jan’10, we celebrated the New Year Twenty-Ten in a special way by having a formal inaugural of our own ~Pankhudi Powai office. We had an awesome experience.  It all started with cleaning & decorating the office with balloons, crap papers & flowers…large number of volunteers where present for this special I-DAY…white board was painted with the new colorful sketches depicting ~Pankhudi fragrance.. after an hour preparation the whole office was decorated by great work of all our enthusiast volunteers..

This special day was blessed by Auntyjee (Shahzad’s mother) & Mr. Mohan Wazir… Ribbon of the inauguration was cut by Auntyjee followed by the Cake-Cutting ceremony… Then after there was some  session happened, in which each one present had to state about his/her New Year’s Resolution…fantastic resolutions came from each n everyone…

Pankhudi Office Inauguration

Shahzad gave the brief history about the ~Pankhudi  inception; stating how small seed of thought started from an Orkut Community nurturered into current state of Pankhudi… Then there was a brief brainstorming about the future projects of Pankhudi… The whole function ended in 2 hours & all had lot of fun.

Abhishek Jha,
PR & Resource Representative,
Mumbai Chapter.

It’s good to see the enthusiasm in the newly inducted interns. Most of them have become regular visitors at the Suman Nagar balwadi and are getting a hands on training. This Sunday four of them – Ajay, Mukesh, Abhinav and Nikunj conducted a survey at the slum area. They went from door to door talking to families about their children and the problems they face. Leading them on their expedition were Uday and Shivani, who helped them in their interaction with the families.
The survey met with some degree of success as it gave us a chance to interact with those children who have gradually dropped out of the classes and figure out their reasons for this. Besides children who have regularly been attending classes we also managed to get in touch with those who never have. The interns are now planning the next phase of the survey to get a better understanding of issues faced by the families in the area.
Looking forward to the results of the survey!

Samiksha Joshi