Friday 27 April 2012
1. Title of the learning
material? - Right to Information motivational posters
2. Key objective of the
learning material? - To inform, educate and
communicate to villagers about
how RTI can be used as a tool to
address village level problems
related to the poor implementation of
government schemes and acts. As
a result of using this visual aid at
the field level we hope to
promote further discussion about rights and
motivate villagers to
independently file RTI.
These posters reference a range
of government schemes which have
frequently been questioned in
the past by villagers filing RTI in Gram
Vikas project locations.
Posters can be selected thematically by field
workers as per the requirement
in each village. The enclosed example
attempts to draw attention to
the effective functioning of government
schools and the Mid Day Meal
Scheme.
3. What has the material
helped to achieve so far? - The posters are
yet to be pilot tested in
villages.
4. Who are the key
audiences? - Village elders, village leaders and
members of Village Executive
Committees. We hope to print these
posters on large pieces of
material visible to large groups of
villagers when assembled at
meetings etc. A visual aid such as this
can hopefully be understood by
all levels of village society,
regardless of literacy level.
There is also the opportunity to
approach enthusiastic village
youths and children residing at Gram
Vikas residential schools with
these materials.
5 . Next Steps? - To finalize
the designs, print the designs and test
the success of the materials by
utilizing them at village meetings.
Thursday 26 April 2012
Happy, crazy days are these
I suddenly felt compelled to write something. I feel a lot has changed and there is really no point in keeping this blog if I don't start making an effort: even if my stream of consciousness style is completely off-putting! At least this way I can document my thoughts and measure my progress in other ways a bit more creative than monthly reports! I do feel as though my experience could be useful to others too.
Gram Vikas are now providing me with a 'living expense' as most of the VSOs get when they come here. This is basically a salary as far as I am concerned as it amounts to more than twice the amount of employees working out in the villages (breaking their backs on a daily basis far more than I do!) I also believe that to be a volunteer, as I was before, you are truly altruistic only when the most basic necessities are provided for you. I no-longer wanted to be a volunteer here and I am happy that I am making a more constructive contribution. I am not travelling as much around this wonderful country but the money dried up anyway so doing work I love with my time here is a pretty good compromise.
I suppose the definition of volunteerism has changed greatly throughout the years due to organisations like VSO monetizing the process to a western ideal but the way I have developed here is how I envisioned it from day one.
As much as it has sometimes been really hard here to get started on things (and I did consider moving on to pastures new), my determination has made its mark and I still find myself here in the rolling hills world of Ganjam, Orissa. There was too much to let go of and too much opportunity to jump upon.
Pro-activity means so much and I am confident now that the relationships I have developed will allow me to get things going. I do not want to be overly critical of VSO but unless people come to Gram Vikas willing to learn with an open, realistic mind, ready to take on the, yes, often illogical tendencies of a traditional development organisation in one of the most traditional, non-progressive, backward and obviously DEVELOPING states of India.........don't come here. I suppose the things I have seen and the people I have talked to have made me realize that as westerners we have a duty when working for an organisation like this to be as non-judgmental as possible and to only criticize or complain when we understand the true extent of life here and are really ready to truly embrace the issues with blood, sweat and tears (not with simply plans and conversation) Life is too short for complaint without action.
My main work is currently teaching English to students in class 3-7 (8 - 11 or 12 year olds) and training teachers at the nearby tribal school - Konkia. My work emphasizes the development of a teaching module whereby spoken English is incorporated into the pre-existing teaching schedule. This means trialing and hopefully implementing a teaching module used by teachers at 4 Gram Vikas residential schools in Orissa. So far I am yet to visit the other schools to see how the teaching differs and to see if this gap in oral language proficiency is also self evident there (I expect it very much will be) This is more than a language exercise though, I believe I am also dealing with addressing school management and attempting to improve the school environment to make the situation more conducive to language acquisition. It should be noted that these children are simultaneously learning new or studying 4 languages: their native language Oriya, Hindi, Sanskrit and English. As the children grew up in the tribal belts of Orissa we can add another language to this list as Oriya has many different forms itself. When I went to Kalahandi district, for instance, my patchy standard Oriya was incomprehensible to the tribal people here!
The exams are finally over at Konkia schools and the new children will soon arrive. I am looking forward to planning out an outline of how we should start experimenting with teaching techniques including the all important 'joyful learning' approach. The children are brimming with potential, we just need to seize the moment and capitalize on their enthusiasm from an early age. My basic understanding of language acquisition theory has taught me that the age bracket I am teaching here at Konkia is the best to target with this module. Get them whilst the brains are still developing. Children soak up knowledge like sponges if it is done correctly. As well as occasionally independently teaching classes, I have began a pronunciation program with the teachers as they are often teaching mistakes to the children when they pronounce words. Often this feels a bit colonial and annoying of me but at the end of the day, when the children leave, they need to be confident and comprehensible to people living outside of Orissa. India is VAST so why restrict their understanding to Oriya-English whereby common mistakes are shared and therefore understood within the state. I am often seeing common mistakes with Z's becoming J's (Zoo, Jew) and P's becoming F's (Fierce, Pierce). As you can imagine this leads to all sorts of confusion. One example I had today was 'straight' being pronounced as 'star light'. I quite enjoyed the mistake but when this is coming from a class 3 teachers with a great responsibility to kick things off the right way, it is quite concerning for me.
I spend a lot of my time currently with students from classes 3-5 as I an unable to get at all the classes due to various reasons and I had some unhappy news as a boy from class 4 died of a brain tumor after leaving the school for treatment. I expect what happened is that he was complaining of pain, was sent back to the village and never admitted to the local hospital as the treatment could not be afforded by the parents or that the family did not believe in the benefit of hospital medicine. I saw a photo of him today and I did in-fact spend some time with him during classes and he seemed bright and sprightly like all of the children. I suppose I just feel disappointed at the inevitability of this situation. I don't know much about cancer but I expect if detected early this death could have been prevented. What can be done about this? Why do I feel as though there is something that can be done to prevent this in the future? There probably is right? Putting up educational material so that the children and teachers can better diagnose pains and complaints? Ah well, the cycle of life never ceases. Poor little guy. His sister is at the school too, younger than him. I wonder if I should go and comfort her or play with her? I suppose I just feel a bit cold about the event.
Despite having relatively good conversational Oriya, I am still very much unsatisfied with it. I know I drive myself hard but the language barrier is quite an obstacle here. I have this vision of writing all over my pale white walled room with sentences and things I wish to say to the children so that I can build up my vocabulary and push my grammatical know-how. The guys from the art section have set me up with water color paints, a painting board, paper and nice brushes so I am craving for time to let my creativity break out in the artistic side too. I am simply not finding the time and I need to make the time!
This section all sounds a bit down. I am very happy still in the jungles of Orissa and I am hoping that when I start trialing out these different teaching methods by hopefully hidden teaching talents can be unveiled. It's a strange but great experience. The way I make the best progress is often moving away from the blackboard and simply facilitating the children to try, try, try. I have had class 5 students (10 year olds) create sentences together that have really pleased me ''We like living in our villages because life there is simple and beautiful. We do not rely on anyone else and have our own religion''. That was a good day.
I am going to keep adding to this blog. It is nice to open up.
Love to all,
Richard.
PS - I will soon upload my last two months of my 'virtual scrap-book'. Basically screen grabs of photos and images all compiled into a big fat image file. It is nice and will give a good idea of my life out here.
I suddenly felt compelled to write something. I feel a lot has changed and there is really no point in keeping this blog if I don't start making an effort: even if my stream of consciousness style is completely off-putting! At least this way I can document my thoughts and measure my progress in other ways a bit more creative than monthly reports! I do feel as though my experience could be useful to others too.
Gram Vikas are now providing me with a 'living expense' as most of the VSOs get when they come here. This is basically a salary as far as I am concerned as it amounts to more than twice the amount of employees working out in the villages (breaking their backs on a daily basis far more than I do!) I also believe that to be a volunteer, as I was before, you are truly altruistic only when the most basic necessities are provided for you. I no-longer wanted to be a volunteer here and I am happy that I am making a more constructive contribution. I am not travelling as much around this wonderful country but the money dried up anyway so doing work I love with my time here is a pretty good compromise.
I suppose the definition of volunteerism has changed greatly throughout the years due to organisations like VSO monetizing the process to a western ideal but the way I have developed here is how I envisioned it from day one.
As much as it has sometimes been really hard here to get started on things (and I did consider moving on to pastures new), my determination has made its mark and I still find myself here in the rolling hills world of Ganjam, Orissa. There was too much to let go of and too much opportunity to jump upon.
Pro-activity means so much and I am confident now that the relationships I have developed will allow me to get things going. I do not want to be overly critical of VSO but unless people come to Gram Vikas willing to learn with an open, realistic mind, ready to take on the, yes, often illogical tendencies of a traditional development organisation in one of the most traditional, non-progressive, backward and obviously DEVELOPING states of India.........don't come here. I suppose the things I have seen and the people I have talked to have made me realize that as westerners we have a duty when working for an organisation like this to be as non-judgmental as possible and to only criticize or complain when we understand the true extent of life here and are really ready to truly embrace the issues with blood, sweat and tears (not with simply plans and conversation) Life is too short for complaint without action.
My main work is currently teaching English to students in class 3-7 (8 - 11 or 12 year olds) and training teachers at the nearby tribal school - Konkia. My work emphasizes the development of a teaching module whereby spoken English is incorporated into the pre-existing teaching schedule. This means trialing and hopefully implementing a teaching module used by teachers at 4 Gram Vikas residential schools in Orissa. So far I am yet to visit the other schools to see how the teaching differs and to see if this gap in oral language proficiency is also self evident there (I expect it very much will be) This is more than a language exercise though, I believe I am also dealing with addressing school management and attempting to improve the school environment to make the situation more conducive to language acquisition. It should be noted that these children are simultaneously learning new or studying 4 languages: their native language Oriya, Hindi, Sanskrit and English. As the children grew up in the tribal belts of Orissa we can add another language to this list as Oriya has many different forms itself. When I went to Kalahandi district, for instance, my patchy standard Oriya was incomprehensible to the tribal people here!
The exams are finally over at Konkia schools and the new children will soon arrive. I am looking forward to planning out an outline of how we should start experimenting with teaching techniques including the all important 'joyful learning' approach. The children are brimming with potential, we just need to seize the moment and capitalize on their enthusiasm from an early age. My basic understanding of language acquisition theory has taught me that the age bracket I am teaching here at Konkia is the best to target with this module. Get them whilst the brains are still developing. Children soak up knowledge like sponges if it is done correctly. As well as occasionally independently teaching classes, I have began a pronunciation program with the teachers as they are often teaching mistakes to the children when they pronounce words. Often this feels a bit colonial and annoying of me but at the end of the day, when the children leave, they need to be confident and comprehensible to people living outside of Orissa. India is VAST so why restrict their understanding to Oriya-English whereby common mistakes are shared and therefore understood within the state. I am often seeing common mistakes with Z's becoming J's (Zoo, Jew) and P's becoming F's (Fierce, Pierce). As you can imagine this leads to all sorts of confusion. One example I had today was 'straight' being pronounced as 'star light'. I quite enjoyed the mistake but when this is coming from a class 3 teachers with a great responsibility to kick things off the right way, it is quite concerning for me.
I spend a lot of my time currently with students from classes 3-5 as I an unable to get at all the classes due to various reasons and I had some unhappy news as a boy from class 4 died of a brain tumor after leaving the school for treatment. I expect what happened is that he was complaining of pain, was sent back to the village and never admitted to the local hospital as the treatment could not be afforded by the parents or that the family did not believe in the benefit of hospital medicine. I saw a photo of him today and I did in-fact spend some time with him during classes and he seemed bright and sprightly like all of the children. I suppose I just feel disappointed at the inevitability of this situation. I don't know much about cancer but I expect if detected early this death could have been prevented. What can be done about this? Why do I feel as though there is something that can be done to prevent this in the future? There probably is right? Putting up educational material so that the children and teachers can better diagnose pains and complaints? Ah well, the cycle of life never ceases. Poor little guy. His sister is at the school too, younger than him. I wonder if I should go and comfort her or play with her? I suppose I just feel a bit cold about the event.
Despite having relatively good conversational Oriya, I am still very much unsatisfied with it. I know I drive myself hard but the language barrier is quite an obstacle here. I have this vision of writing all over my pale white walled room with sentences and things I wish to say to the children so that I can build up my vocabulary and push my grammatical know-how. The guys from the art section have set me up with water color paints, a painting board, paper and nice brushes so I am craving for time to let my creativity break out in the artistic side too. I am simply not finding the time and I need to make the time!
This section all sounds a bit down. I am very happy still in the jungles of Orissa and I am hoping that when I start trialing out these different teaching methods by hopefully hidden teaching talents can be unveiled. It's a strange but great experience. The way I make the best progress is often moving away from the blackboard and simply facilitating the children to try, try, try. I have had class 5 students (10 year olds) create sentences together that have really pleased me ''We like living in our villages because life there is simple and beautiful. We do not rely on anyone else and have our own religion''. That was a good day.
I am going to keep adding to this blog. It is nice to open up.
Love to all,
Richard.
PS - I will soon upload my last two months of my 'virtual scrap-book'. Basically screen grabs of photos and images all compiled into a big fat image file. It is nice and will give a good idea of my life out here.
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