Madhav Ranganathan (madhavr@stanford.edu). Ananya Trust: Shibumi School, Anjanapura, Karnataka Site Visit: July 4 2002. Background: Ananya is a school that takes children who are rejected from other schools for various reasons and gives them a good environment to learn and develop social and community skills. The children are aged 6-12 and typically stay there until they fit into the regular schools. Ananya works in partnership with various other organizations to get children and place them. They have about 50 students right now and they plan to expand by about 10 per year till they reach 100. Ananya rents a van to pick up the children from various neighbourhoods in Bangalore city and the villages around Anjanapura on Monday morning and houses them till Friday evening when the children are returned to their families. Getting there: I went to Hari Menon's (a Bay Area resident)father's place in Kormangla, Bangalore. Hari's father is actively involved with Ananya Trust and has funded and assisted in funding of Ananya. We drove from Kormangla to the School in Shibhumi. To get to Shibhumi, you go on Kanakapura road for few kms and turn a left towards Anjanapura. After couple of kms through Anjanpura village, the road turns into a mud road that goes through allotted plots of land. After going for a km on this road you reach Shibhumi school. The mud road goes further on for about 0.5 kms to the Khoday distillery factory. The total time from Kormangla is about 45 mins. We reached the school around 11 am. Physical Features : The school is on a 5 acre plot of land that is designated as a green belt. There are a number of trees there and the area around is open. There is a granite quarry next to the plot of land and there is a village around this quarry. The area is about 2-3 kms (as the crow flies) from Bannerughatta National Forest. Around the road by which we came are designated plots of land either for Bangalore Development Authority or private lands. It is really open and not developed, but one can expect that in a couple of years, the area will be fairly developed with a pucca road and houses. The school land has a solar powered electric fence around it since there were some incidents of wild elephant attacks in the neighbouring villages. As one enters the school through the gate, one sees a well to the right, next to a watchman's house. Further down the path, is the kitchen and office unit of the school. This consists of a single storeyed brick building (all buildings here are single storeyed brick buildings) about 15mts long and 5 mts wide. This building has an office, a kitchen and the girls hostel. There is a covered veranda for this kitchen which is where the children have their meals. Behind this building are hand wash basins, a toilet and 2 "bathrooms" which are essentially open spaces where the children can shower. The kitchen has a gas stove but it is in the veranda on a wood fire that most of the cooking is done. Going around the land, we see three open "classrooms", which are circular platforms about 5m diameter with a temporary tin roof. There is also a brick building which has two classes of about the same size. The classrooms have no furniture and the children usually sit on mats or on the floor. In addition to this there is a boys hostel and a guest house. The guest house is usually unoccupied but houses a frequent visitor from the Netherlands who is there for a few months every year. There is a small playground for the kids and but besides that there is just greenery in the form of trees and shrubs. At one side of the land is the edge of a the granite quarry, which so there is a small rock. There is a plan to carve seats in this rock to and use the area as a little theater for plays. There is also a bore well in the land. All in all the impression is that there is minimum infrastructure in the area and a lot of natural surroundings. The land is currently owned by one Mrs.Valli who is very devoted to the idea of the school and is happy to see the way the land is being used. Her daughter is currently involved in land studies in the United States and hopes to apply her ideas to land preservation in India. Ananya has many solar panels for electricity including one for the electric fence. They also plan to grow some organic vegetables on the land. Since the land is designated as a green belt, they are not allowed to cut any trees and also they need to get permission to run a school there. For this purpose they plan to "convert" the land so that Govt cannot acquire the land when they please. This will cost a total of 12-14 lakh rupees. Even then the land will be owned by Mrs.Valli and they will be paying the rent for the place. The People at Ananya: Dr.Shashi Rao, founder, teacher: Dr.Rao has done her PhD in Education in Penn State University. She founded Shishu Mandir which helped slum children in Bangalore. She founded Ananya in 1998 to address those children that do not fit into any school, i.e. those that are rejected by all the other schools for various reasons. Ananya is giving these kids a good environment and an opportunity to develop basic language, science and mathematical skills. Dr.Rao lives in Jayanagar, Bangalore which is about 30-45 minutes by bus from the school. Dr. Rao is about 45-50 years old. Her daughter's school was in the plot of land currently being used for this school, but the school moved to a larger piece of land. George (teacher): George was trained to be a priest and was about the be ordained when he met Dr.Rao. He currently teaches at the school. He lives in the school and also acts as a warden and is a general handyman in the school. His wife Suman also teaches at the school, though on that day, she was away at her parents place since she had just delivered a child. Suman and George were trained by Dr.Rao in the teaching techniques. Poonam (teacher): Poonam had been teaching at Govt Schools when she saw the Ananya School. The old location of the Ananya school was very close to her place. She has been with Ananya since the start and has to travel about 1.5 hours everyday to get to the school. Poonam does not speak Kannada but is a favourite of the kids because she speaks in English and Hindi. She looks to be in her early 30s. Neerja and Bhawani (teachers): They live in Bangalore and are Kannada speaking, trained by Dr.Rao. They are fairly young, maybe in their late 20s/early 30s. Shivamma (cook): Shivamma is an abandoned woman who cooks for the children and tells them stories at night. She lives in the school with George and Suman. Sidhappa and Gauramma: Sidhappa is the watchman of the land and takes care of the place. He has 3 kids, who go to the school. Sidhappa looks to be in his 40s and lives near the entrance of the school. Nisar: Nisar is a street kid, a drug addict who was rescued and currently lives in the school. Being older than the other kids (18 yrs), he take screen printing classes at MAYA. He is also planning to take the National Open School exam in 10th grade. Daily Schedule: 6am: Children wake up,brush teeth, etc. 7-8 : Community time, cleaning of common areas 8-830: Breakfast 8:30-9: Get ready for school 9-2:30 : Classes 2:30 : Lunch time 3-4 : Free time for children 4-5:30 : Bathing, washing turns 5:30 : Tea and snacks 530-630: Study time, George tells stories 630-7: Quiet time 7:30-8: Dinner time 8-830: Clean up of vessels Children are in bed by 9 pm. The Visit: When we first got there we formed a circle with the children and the teachers. Then each child introduced themselves in English "My name is ....". The kids seemed extremely happy to see us and were very friendly and unafraid of us. It was instantly clear that they had no shyness, but were very gentle and well mannered. This is something that always amazes me and reminds me of what Dr.Sandeep Pandey, the Asha founder says "Children come into this world with only two attributes: Love and a complete trust of everyone". Once the introductions were over, the children were seperated into groups of about 10 each and each of the groups were sent with some teachers for their classes. Dr.Shashi Rao, the founder of Ananya took us into the office to talk about the organization. After talking for about 45 mins over tea (brought by the cook Shivamma), we went around to have a look at the plot. We went around the plot for about 45 mins during which Dr.Shashi Rao gave us the details of the plot. After that Hari and Mr.Menon left (about 1245pm), but I stayed behind at Ananya. I talked with Dr.Rao for about an hour and got more details about the school, the organization and the people. Dr.Rao showed me some of the teaching materials they had developed at the school. It is hard to describe the materials in words. Dr.Rao showed me some of those that were developed in Germany for basic mathematics. The teachers at Ananya spend time developing such materials. Dr.Rao also showed me the notebooks of students which were filled with exercises. From what I was told, the students pretty much make up their own exercises and evaluate them. The learning is very intuitive and students essentially learn by trying out various activities. For example in Mathematics, after learning addition, they do exercises like : Write different ways of getting 51 by adding various numbers. In the process, the students get very comfortable with numbers and learn multiplication without being explicitly taught how to do it. Also, the students are really excited and often they fill many many pages with exercises that they give themselves. This also develops a love for writing in the kids. Around 1:45 we went to a class in one of the open classrooms run by one of the teachers, George. George was teaching an English class on prepositions. English and Kannada were used as the medium of instruction. For this he was using two sets of cards. One which had a sentence written in English and another which had a picture depicting the sentence. For example: "The eggs are ON the BOTTOM shelf" was written on one card and there was another card which had a depiction of the sentence with the words ON and BOTTOM. When we went to the class, George was showing the children how to pronounce the words and explaining their meaning. Dr.Rao went in and made the children play a game of identifying the pictures corresponding to the sentences. What struck me most was that the children were really excited to be able to identify these words and sentences. The other striking feature was that the role of the teacher was simply one of facilitation of the learning process. The students pretty much learned on their own with minimum teacher effort. This is part of the philosophy of Ananya and the teachers are encouraged to spend more time making the learning materials rather than on telling the students what is right and wrong. The children really like the teachers and are constantly playing around with them. After the class, many of them were holding Dr.Rao to show her their note books. After the class, the children assembled for lunch prepared by the cook Shivamma. They assembled in the veranda of the main building and sat down in two rows. The children take turns serving and cleaning the area. The food is served in steel plates which the chilren wash after their food. The food consisted of rice and curry with chick peas, green peas. Once the children finished eating, they had their play time so they went off and entertained themselves around the campus. The teachers and I sat down to have our lunch aruond 330pm. After lunch we waited for the bus(Bangalore City Transport) to take us (teachers and myself) back to Bangalore. Dr.Shashi Rao took a couple of kids to the hospital for minor injuries. I went back to Bangalore city with Poonam. There is bus service from Khoday distillery to Bangalore service which is convenient for the teachers at this school. Some other facts about the school: The school has no vehicle other than a bicycle. Dr.Rao said during the course of the visit that she her wish list included a scooter for people. The surrounding area right now is uninhabited. The nearest dispensary or store is in Anjanapura village about 1 mile away. Right now the school just has little children and hopes to fit them into regular school. Their policy is one of inclusion in which they take students that are rejected and give them a chance. Ananya school does not follow any fixed curriculum and the students are not put in standards. Instead they are divided into groups based on ability. These groups are assessed every year. In addition the curriculum is very integrated and the same concept is reinforced in different disciplines. Ananya does not advocate any religion but they do celebrate Gandhiji' s B'Day, Teachers day and Childrens day . Ananya also looks to financial support of students who leave school for these reasons. The teachers work on really low salaries (Rs.22000) which is a great indication of their commitment. Especially since some of them have to travel long distances. Ananya tries to have 1 teacher for every 10 students. Parent Meetings: There are parent meetings three times a year. Dr.Rao explained that this means a loss of days wages for the parents, so initially they had to do a lot of convincing to get the parents but once they have been to the school they understand better and there is close to complete attendance in subsequent meetings. Networking with other organization: Dr.Rao works with other organizations in Bangalore like APSA and MAYA and gets a lot of training material from places like Digantar and outside the country. In addition she runs teacher training camps during the year when she has the time. Last year, due to the running around for the FCRA, she could not run these camps. Ananya works with other schools to place their students once they have gone through their school. Major Expenses: Rent: Rs. 1.25 lakhs Salaries: Rs. 2.64 lakhs Utilities/Medical : Rs.36000 Study Materials : Rs. 54000 Student expenses: Rs. 90000 Maintenance expenses: Rs. 1.2 lakhs Future Plans: Ananya wants to expand from 50-100 students by taking 10 students a year for the next 5 years. Hence they will need 5 more classrooms. To construct one classroom, they need about Rs.30000. In addition they will probably need a couple of more hostels. Also, right now there is only one toilet for all the people there. They plan to construct 4 more toilets and 4 more bathrooms.