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The Beacon |
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From the Editor’s desk Dear ILP volunteers We are pleased to bring you the March-April 2007 edition of Beacon. This issue features a curtain raiser on the upcoming 9th Annual Race for Literacy. This year’s race is scheduled to be held on Mothers Day (May 13th 2007) and honor the role of a mother in a child’s development. ILP-CA chapter volunteers are actively involved in a lot of detailed planning to make this years race a big success.
We are also proud to announce the formation of an ILP youth board. This group is a bunch of very enthusiastic high school students who have brought in some fresh and innovative ideas to ILP. The Youth Board members have instituted a Pen Pal program with the Puraskara scholarship students in India and are planning several other activities through the rest of the year.
The focus article in this issue is the ILP library initiative in Bangalore. ILP in partnership with Paraspara has set up two libraries in Siddhartha Nagar and Akiappa Garden in Bangalore. Sonim Technologies and Motorola have sponsored this program. The demand for a library came from the community itself as a spin-off of the ‘Kalike’ literacy program that ILP had supported in the community.
Finally one of our dedicated volunteers in Hyderabad shares her experiences in using very creative methods in teaching as a part of her lesson plan to teach children of various ages.
Enjoy reading!!
Editorial Team |
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My experiences with ILP Hyderabad Meeta Grover I am a non-Telugu speaking telecom professional currently home (in Hyderabad where telugu is the mother tongue for most people) as my kids are small. When the idea of teaching was mooted to me I said a big "NO", no teaching background and a massive language barrier!! But I was curious as to how another north Indian friend was managing to teach. Thus I made my first visit to Madhapur Mandal School and sat through the English fun hour for the second-class children. A big book was read to them with a lot of dramatization. Then there was word matching using flash cards and finally activity time – drawing themselves! There was so much joy and enthusiasm in the kids (even in the ones in other classes on seeing us there!). All this while, there were two ILP volunteers running the show – one knew Telugu but the other didn't. However, they managed beautifully and I was hooked. I did my first session on body parts. Stapled newspapers together, made a kid lie down on it and drew the body outline. Then we named the parts and sang lots of poems like – "Heads, shoulders…" and "Where is thumb king?" All our activities were centered on the body parts that day. But adrenalin actually began to flow when I was asked to do Hindi as the third language with the sixth class weekly once for an hour. Those forty kids were so full of life and naughtiness that I knew with a little effort on my part I could encourage them to pay attention to Hindi as well. I looked at their syllabus and then designed my stories, songs and games around it. To date we have played – antakshari and tambola with Hindi words and passing the parcel. We have sung "Raghupati raghav…" to "Kajraa re..." in class. When I started this journey in November 2006, some of these kids knew the matras and varnamala. But in the first session nothing could have been accomplished without a Telugu translator. It is February 2007 now and I have been able to take 3 classes without any translator. When needed, one or more kids do the translation for the others! It was most satisfying to hear their Hindi teacher say that there has been an 80% improvement in the kids after we started and that they enjoy the class very much with us. Another highlight was when twenty-two of the forty kids submitted their homework of the previous week (given by us). Of course lots of them had copied from each other, but at least they had made the effort! I should probably mention here that the kids got stickers/smiling faces from me on every submission of the homework. A small bribe? Well, my son also loves to get stickers when he does well! Around New Year all the kids wrote their wish for the future and not one asked for anything materialistic! Most of them wanted to do well in studies and make their families happy. Some wanted to grow up and work for HSBC (which happens to be providing the infrastructure for this school). The flexibility that ILP platform gives me in designing my lesson plans ensures that I have guidance and direction but no stress and absolute freedom to let loose my creative juices. An hour of my time in a week is really nothing, we probably watch that much TV if not more. But for these kids it is a means towards more opportunities and a window towards a brighter future. (Our own kids also learn faster and more easily when taught in a fun way. And we still love a good story!). Some young men and women from Deloitte and HSBC spend an hour or two with these sixth and seventh class kids every Saturday emphasizing on spoken English, which is really great! Some kids are very bright but need a little push and direction from us. We can all make a difference to their lives and even more importantly to our own lives by spreading literacy with joy! "Deep in my heart I do believe that we shall overcome…" Come; let us walk hand in hand. To learn more about the Hyderabad Chapter, visit http://hyd.ilpnet.org
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The ILP Youth Board Contributions by: Sejal Hathi and Vidya Maha
The idea of a youth board was first incubated nearly a year ago, when one of the current members, Sejal Hathi, began attending the CA Chapter’s biweekly meetings. After researching and learning about India Literacy Project online, Sejal had contacted the CA chapter in the hope of infusing youth insight and contribution into the volunteer work in the area. Although Sejal had initially intended simply to volunteer with the CA Chapter and hopefully travel to India during the summer to participate in some on-site projects, after learning more about the organization and coming to a few more meetings, the idea of creating a youth board, in which even more high school students could gain exposure to IlP, presented itself. Padmini Ranganathan and Nandakumar Krishnan, who had from the beginning advocated the idea of an ILP Youth Board, connected Sejal with another high school student, Karthik Jagadeesh, to begin talks about the Youth Board’s potential mission and goals. After a few more weeks— and the consistent guidance of ILP mentors— late last year, Sejal and Karthik mustered a rudimentary group of about seven high school students to become the founding ILP Youth Board.
Since its inception, the Youth Board has grown tremendously. Not only has it received many new members, but it has also found innumerable opportunities to develop and grow as a team. The Youth Board holds meetings and conference calls every month to discuss upcoming events and give updates on current projects. The team is composed of responsible leaders who are sincerely dedicated to bolstering ILP’s founding mission.
The primary asset of the Youth Board is its constituency: youth. As representatives of a distinct element of the community, the Youth Board imbues ILP with a rather singular and novel perspective on literacy and international service. It is often astonishing to observe how many fresh and innovative ideas the members concoct to advance the goal of literacy and raise awareness in the local community.
Presently, the Youth Board is working on establishing a pen pal program between high school students in India and America. The objective of this program is to forge a relationship between these two groups of students, giving each group an opportunity to bond and to exchange thoughts and ideas about the divergent cultures they both live in. The hope is that ultimately, the students in both India and America will realize that despite their geographical distance from each other, they share a strong and poignant culture because of their common beliefs and heritage. Alongside this project, the Youth Board is preparing to hold a talent show that will showcase dancing, singing, and instrumental music from around the world to raise money for ILP. This Multicultural Talent Showcase is slotted to occur in late spring, and the Youth Board is working ardently to make it a success. The pen pal program and the Talent Showcase are projects that the Youth Board has itself conceived of and taken charge of independently; however, it is also collaborating with the main branch of ILP to help advertise the annual Race for Literacy taking place in May. Toward this end, the Youth Board is recruiting middle to high school students to volunteer at the race or participate in it as runners as well.
The Youth Board has progressed on quite a journey from its uncertain inception to the promising and committed group of members it comprises today. ILP cherishes great hopes for its future development and knows that it will contribute enormously to the furtherance of ILP’s goals. Founding member Sejal Hathi anticipates, “I hope the ILP Youth Board will eventually grow to have chapters in quite a few schools in the Bay Area. Youth assert a dynamic and increasingly important voice in today’s world, and it would be beneficial to ILP to have a youth task force that enables the organization to expand its outreach and unfurl its horizons to new and unprecedented levels.”
The 9th Annual Race for Literacy – Much More Than a Race! Manu Jain
Please register at http://www.raceforliteracy.org for the 5K and 10K runs, or for the 5K walk. The race is organized on a fast-paced USATF certified course and is professionally timed. Winners in each category get prizes and free T-shirt and breakfast is provided to all. Groups of 6 or more can get their T-shirts customized with their team-names on it. After the race, unwind with music, food and refreshments, and fun activities for the entire family.
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