NALAMDANA SITE VISIT REPORT
The following covers a site visit I had made for the Nalamdana project in Chennai, on 14th November 1999, and also my subsequent trips to the Nalamdana offices on Nov 18th, 1999 and July 8, 2000. The visit comprises two parts: firstly, a visit to the Birla planetarium & museum with the children that receive scholarships as part of Nalamdana’s Education-Youth Leadership program, and secondly, two information gathering visits that were made to the offices of Nalamdana in Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai.
To begin with, this site visit deviates from the usual ASHA site visits made given the non-standard nature of Nalamdana’s educational program. In other words, the students supported by the educational program are studying in the 8th-12th grades at various corporation schools and other state-run schools in Chennai, and as a result, the site visit originated at the premises of the Nalamdana office and was continued outdoors, instead of being conducted at a single school. Asha volunteers from the United States had visited Nalamdana thrice until then.
The first (site) visit was made by Anand Udupa(from Asha-Chennai) and Rashmi(then Asha-KY) in mid-1999. The second visit was when D.Prakash, then Asha-USA president, had conducted a whirlwind leadership development workshop for the Nalamdana scholars. The third visit was made by Maya Thiagarajan, an Asha-DC volunteer, who had conducted informal English classes for the students.
Janki, a volunteer from Asha-Chennai, and myself scheduled a visit to Nalamdana where we would both meet the students and then take them on a visit to the Birla planetarium on Saturday, 14th November. The Nalamdana office is located at Thiruvanmiyur, in a middle-class neighborhood. The office is actually a complete building in itself, with the top floor having a thatched roof, serving as the location in which most of the workshops/classes are held. The premises serve as the usual meeting point for the students where they also interact with the Nalamdana office-bearers. Nalamdana allows the students to come in and use various office resources including the PCs, Internet access, fax machines, printers as well as the makeshift library containing National Geographic and other English periodicals.
I first met Jeeva & Sampath, who are both members of Nalamdana’s Executive Board, and who also organize street theatre in urban/rural slums. We then met with about 12 of the Nalamdana scholars, including 5 girls and 7 boys in all. Absent were the three scholars that Asha-Princeton supports as part of its Asha-Star program. Nithya Balaji, Nalamdana co-ordinator in Chennai, introduced us as Asha members and also asked each of the students to introduce themselves. Nithya had about twenty years’ experience in the advertising field before beginning her career in community service working for Nalamdana, Each student was asked to mention his/her name and something about themselves, including the grade they studied in as well as their hobbies.
Once the round of introductions was over, we asked the students how they were performing in their respective classes. At the time, they were all busy preparing for their half-yearly exams. The most common problems the students faced dealt with Math and English. With English, the students mentioned that they had the most problems with English grammar. Until then, the only English workshop that was held comprised of informal English sessions Maya Thiagarajan(Asha-DC) had conducted in July 99. These workshops were designed more to improve the students’ conversational English and build their self-confidence. The students also had problems with Integral and Differential Calculus. One of the boys had an interesting problem: he commented that his school exams sometimes consisted of ‘twisted’ questions i.e. questions that weren’t already covered in the text book and hadn’t been worked out in class. An illustration of a glaring hole in the Indian Educational system i.e. promoting rote rather than creative learning. Janki & Aravind offered to help the students out by organizing some Math classes the following few weeks.
Then, we all trooped into a van and set off for the planetarium. The highlight of the visit to the planetarium was their twice-daily 15-minute show that included material on the composition of the Solar System, the various planets, constellations and so forth. Sampath joined us on this trip and helped facilitate our interaction with the kids. Once the show was over, I actually started speaking to the students informally. Speaking a mixture of Tamil and English, they started talking to me freely.
The boys were very inquisitive in general, asking me whether I worked or studied in the United States, what prompted me to leave India, and how life and customs in the US compared to those in India. Also, they were interested in knowing how education in the United States differed in terms of subject content in schools, toughness of courses and type of questions asked in the exams. I explained to them about my experiences as a graduate student in the US, the grading system, the emphasis on applying subject material to solving problems Vs the emphasis on rote learning in Indian schools.
The girls were initially hesitant to talk and I started off by first speaking with Dhanalakshmi, one of the three Nalamdana scholars who had finished her schooling and was doing her Diploma in Computer Science, at Central Polytechnic(Chennai). She was in the middle of her second year and was unsure of what programming courses to take in the upcoming semesters, but she did express an interest in taking practical courses related to Web-based technology. From the experience of my friends who had worked in India in the software arena, I spoke to her about the likely job situation she would face upon graduation, what kind of expectations software firms would have of potential recruits, and how her final-year project could prove to be valuable in helping her land that difficult-to-get first job.
Soon, the other girls also started joining in on our conversation, and the interaction became a lot freer amongst us. When we came across the museum exhibits at the planetarium, they asked questions about the type of material the exhibits were made out of, what purpose each exhibit served etc. They were also curious as to why I chose to be in the software profession and what my long-terms plans were regarding settling in the US vs returning to India.
Overall, the children were a very bright bunch showing ample curiosity, very good communication skills, good fluency and understanding of English and were very appreciative of Nalamdana’s support in their academic and personal growth. The lively interaction with the children was very enjoyable and helped me get a true sense of the ground realities of the work Nalamdana was doing via its innovative youth leadership program.
From extensive discussions with Mrs. Nithya, it appeared that following were the key activities/workshops that were either executed or were planned for years 2000-2001 of the Education/Youth Leadership program.
1999-2000
Schedule of Events
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July |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
Jan |
Feb |
Mar |
Apr |
May |
Jun |
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English Workshop (12 sessions) |
Leadership (3 sessions) |
Parents Meeting |
Science (4 or 5 sessions) after Dec 20th |
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Parents Meeting |
Social Issues, Health and Skills Development (10 sessions total) |
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Field Outing to Dakshinachitra |
Group Organization (2 sessions) |
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Career Day at Madras Univ. |
Corporate Mentoring(2 Locations per child) |
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2000-2001 New Students selection |
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New Student-Parents meeting |
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A detailed description of each of the above activities is included in Nalamdana’s Annual Report of its Educational Program.
Asha-Chennai’s
interaction with Nalamdana
Asha-Chennai has project-specific local co-ordinators who interact with the respective NGOs on behalf of Asha chapters in the US. When I had visited Asha-Chennai, it was in a formative stage and not quite ready to accept/execute projects by itself since that entailed doing some of its own fundraising.
Janki, Asha-Chennai’s Nalamdana contact, had organized for the children :
- Some higher-level Math classes, covering Integral and Differential Calculus
- Some informal communication workshops for the children
1.
Overall Approach :
In general, the students who have received the educational scholarships are a
very bright , enthusiastic and talented
bunch. In one way, Nalamdana’s focus on helping the “elite”students as opposed to
“not-so-fortunate” students could be questioned. However, the overall objective of the program is to build local
leadership that can impact its surrounding community’s social & economic
development positively, and when seen in this light, this targetted approach
seems justified.
2. Dire Need of a Full-time Program Co-ordinator: In the past year, Nalamdana has covered a lot of
ground in both its health-care and educational program initiatives. However, all this has caused the workload to increase tremendously, and as a result, Nalamdana desperately needs a full-time co-ordinator to focus on and supervise the Education-Youth Leadership program.
3. Space constraints: The Nalamdana office does not have adequate space to house a mini-library, as well a computer which the students can use for experimenting with software. A recent health-care grant obtained by Nalamdana covers renting additional space in an adjacent building where volunteers will be housed for just 2 months each year, and so, this could possibly resolve the space constraint.
4. Student Behavior: One problem faced by Nalamdana, according to a couple of parents, was that their children had a tendency to be arrogant and thought of themselves as “Privileged”, when compared to
other children, because they received scholarships. Various thoughts are in motion, as to how this can be prevented.
5. Location: Since all the students are scattered around various parts of Chennai, it isn’t an easy matter
to co-ordinate and transport all the students to the Nalamdana office, which is the focal point of
any educational program activity.
Given that the program itself has been in operation for just a few years and that the students are
very young, it may be a while before the effectiveness of Nalamdana’s education/youth leadership program can be gauged, but in the near-term, most of their activities seem to be steps in the right direction.