Swanirvar Visit 20 June, 2006

I caught the local train from Sealdah in the morning at around 8
am. Our first hop was Machlandapur which is around 1.5 hours
away. Sealdah is the starting point so we managed to get seats
alongwith a host of bank officers heading out from Kolkata to man the
banks in the villages. The next train would be hosting the
teachers. From Machlandapur we caught a bus heading to Adharmanik
village (Baduria block). I was going with Sujit Sinha and another
gentleman who was a professor interested in micro-finance
work. Swanirvar has some land with a permanent headquarter here. The
village is around 60 Km away from Kolkata.

Sujitda went through a quick tour of the main premise and the
office. He also gave an overview of all the activities of the
group. There around 7 supervisors handling the broad areas 115
employees. Swanirvar's work is split across: education (pre-primary,
primary 4 schools/120 children/12 teachers, and the youth & culture),
self-help group (CARE helps them here, group sizes of 12-20/7500
groups), health (arsenic) and agriculture (20-30 villages, organic
farming, some ties to work at UC Davis). 

My interest was the pre-primary schools and government
intervention. The pre-primary schools run from 7-9:30 am in the
morning so that was out. I set out with Prosanto to visit two
government schools. I kept hearing from Sujitda of all the work
Swanirvar has done to get the government primary school teachers
involved and I wanted to see that live. The pre-primary teachers in
the respective villages are the main links to the government
schools. These teachers keep visiting these schools and talking to the
teacher and headmaster/headmistress. 

Prosanto took me two such schools where the people in charge are
working with Swanirvar. The examples of these are joint Rakhi and
Sahitya Sabha celebrations. Sahitya Sabha is the cultural day where
the kids sing songs, recite poetry, enact plays and skits. The
material is composed by the children and the whole show is organized
by them. It is a fascinating showcase of learning and
empowerment. Kids love it. 

The government schools had around 60/70:1 student to teacher
ratio. The buildings were solid and teachers were around. The teachers
were quiet comfortable with Prosanto and it seemed that he was
in tune with their affairs. His attitude towards these people was very
interesting - mild and concilliatory. I think Swanirvar's biggest win
is this slow and non-aggressive way of influencing the government
schools. Prosanto talked to the headmistress about upcoming workshops, 
joint training sessions and joint sports day. He also suggested some
exercises related to teaching involving group learning. 

Another angle to this is the involvement of the parents especially
mothers. The pre-primary teachers get the mothers of the students also
for sessions involving education and health. 

After the schools and a hefty traditional meal we headed out to meet
the new school inspector. Unfortunately he was pretty busy and I
didn't get a chance to observe how he interacted with Prosanto.

I came away with a good impression that Swanirvar has made significant
inroads into getting government school teachers interested and
participating in a lot of joint exercises. There have been a good
number of teachers who have gone out of their way to attend workshops
(repeatedly) and apply these principles in their classrooms.

Swanirvar is also trying a new experiment todo english language
instruction using videos. Maggie a retired teacher from England is
going to visit Swanirvar for an extended stay. Sujitda has got in
touch with Randy Wang a researcher in educational instruction via
video. I hope to raise some money for Swanirvar to purchase some DVD
players and televisions.