Project Sangamam - Poondi
Report for Jan 2005

ASHA Chennai Projects
Sangamam Poondi – Working with Primary schools near Poondi

February 8th, 2005
Questions? 
Contact Rajaraman Krishnan 
rajaram@solnettechnologies.com


Recall …

The project was approved and started in September 2004. We started work with the schools at Kuppammal Chattiram and Kanakavalli Puram then with the understanding that we will take up the school at Pattarai Perambudur once we get more comfortable with the funding situation. During the December monthly meeting we decided to start work with Pattarai Perambudur in January.

From the last report, the expected activities for this period were,

  1. New teachers will be provided for Pattarai Perambudur and other work like black board repair will also start there.

  2. A medical camp is being organized at Kuppamal Chattiram and Kanakavalli Puram in the next week.

  3. More sports and learning materials are being purchased for the schools. We should be able to assess their use in their schools shortly.

  4. Srinivasan is working towards organizing a school day function at these schools sometime in early February. 

Out of these we could not organize the medical camps because of lack of availability of the doctors. We expect to conduct this in February.


Happenings during period Mid Dec 2004 to Jan 31 2005

1. Pattarai Perambudur 
We started working with the school at Pattarai Perambudur. This is a bigger school than the other two put together. It has about 240 children. Two Asha teachers are going to this school. They are Jayanthi and Mythili (???). They had already started coming for Asha training sessions.

The black boards at this school required rework like in the other two schools. We made new black boards for all the classes. We also painted the lower two feet of the younger children’s classrooms with black paint so as to allow the children to scribble in this area. (Total cost – about Rs 4000).


2. Other Works
At Kanakavalli Puram there was a pipe that was leaking causing water to stagnate in the playground area. This needed to be repaired. This work has been done. (Total cost – about Rs. 1000).

The following items were purchased for the Kuppammal Chathiram and Kanakavalli Puram schools,

  • Learning and sports materials incl. ??? (total of Rs 1500 for the two schools)

  • A bureau to store these and the school registers. (Rs 2250 each)

  • A tape recorder and audio tapes. (Rs 2500 each).

These are being used by the schools.

Republic day was celebrated by all the three schools. From Asha we gave the children chocolates, and pinup flags. (total cost Rs. 750).


3. Site Visits, Reporting, etc.
One of our volunteers Mr. Viswanathan visited the project a couple of times. Other than that none of the other volunteers have been able to visit the project. Viswanathan saw the completed plumbing work at Kanakavalli Puram, and completed black boards at Pattarai Perambudur.

Sreenivasan has visited us several times and has provided photos of all these. Further he has written a report from his perspective which has been posted on our website.


4. Fund Raising
While we have raised about Rs 40000 for the project, we are yet to raise a significant portion of the funds required. We are in the process of proposing this project to a UK based donor and expect to raise the amount required for the project.


Expected Activities for February and Future
In the next month the following activities are expected in this project,

  1. A medical camp is to be organized at all the three schools.

  2. Sports and learning materials are being purchased for the Pattarai Perambudur school.

  3. Srinivasan is working towards organizing a school day function at these schools sometime in early March.

  4. We need to start planning for the summer and the next academic year. For the summer my thought was to have the Asha teachers conduct a survey of the parents in the village in lines with the PROBE study. Details of this need to be defined shortly.