Seed Narpanigal had been started by Karthi and others in Karumbalai
in March 2007,with support from Asha-MIT/Boston. Karthi had worked
for 7 years with SEED PLAN, coordinated by Ted Adams (http://www.ashanet.org/projects/project-view.php?p=422). For various reasons Karthi
wanted to start a new group, and after a lot of deliberations Asha had decided to support him. I was visiting in July 2007 to see how things
were going. Funding so far had been on a
3 monthly basis. They seemed to be doing
well, and had come up with neat ideas like the children’s magazine, so I was
keen to see in person how things were going.
My visit began with Karthi and me
going to meet Vidiyal, to thank them for routing
funds for Seed Narpanigal. Vidiyal is doing
excellent work with street children in
We then went to Karumbalai, the slum where Karthi lives and where SEED PLAN and Seed Narpanigal work. Right at the entrance to Karumbalai is main Seed Narpanigal center, built on the top of a volunteer’s home. The volunteer’s family allowed them to build a room on top, without charging them anything. In return after 4 years the family wold get to keep the room. The room itself had been built with the help of a Rs. 30,000 donation that Karthi had managed to raise from a supporter, and Karthi and other volunteers had contributed labor – helped build the building and the steps leading up to it. The room is airy and spacious (comparatively) and has lights and a fan. It is only after I saw the other rooms they use in other parts of Karumbalai did I appreciate how airy and spacious this was. All buildings in the slum have rooms that are extremely small, making it very difficult to conduct any kind of classroom for more than 8-10 students at most at a time. The room is whitewashed so is nice and bright, and also is the place for the books they have collected and for magazines. There is blackboard on one end. In the day time it is a place for people to come and read, in the evening it is where the classes IX to XII meet. The goal is to make the library accessible to all of the Karumbalai residents.
We had lunch in that room, a sumptuous feast (served on banana leaves and all) and cooked by Karthi’s sister. I was initially not too happy at the expense, but then Karthi explained that it was an opportunity for all of us eat together, and was a small token of thanks from him to the group of volunteers who work with him. After that I shut up.
We then had a discussion with the 10 volunteers (out of the 12 total) who work with Seed Narpanigal. Many of them have had a difficult path to finishing class X or XII (some had not taken the exams yet). Most had dropped out for some reason or the other, and had taken the exams as private students. Karthi had typically played a huge role in getting tracking them down, encouraging them to take the exams, coaching them and so on. And getting them into college after class XII. Since their academic background is not that strong (and due to financial issues), many were doing BA in correspondence courses. The quality of these courses should be looked into, but now everyone wants to have a ‘B.A’ degree, and I suppose that is a good thing
These youth are all helping with Seed Narpanigal and teaching the children. For example the youth doing B.A English through correspondence teaches English. We have to look into the quality of the teaching.
In the late afternoon we spent some time at the other centers (one for classes I – IV and another for classes V - VIII). In both centers (all three centers have nice names in Tamil – classes I – IV is Vandugal Arangam, classes V – VIII is ….., classes IX to XII is Kanavugal Arangam). Each of them had around 40-50 children, all squished into the rooms. As I said above, individual rooms are very small in all buildings. The children, all dressed in their best, had prepared dance and music programs and performed them for the visitor (me). And read our paragraphs welcoming me etc. In both centers there were two youth in charge, who took help from others as needed. Again, I was unsure of the quality issue. We had some discussions on that – on how to measure quality. For classes I – IV we discussed that reading and writing fluently would be a good goal. The chapter intends to help the group define goals for all its centers. At the centers I was also shown the register where they had listed all their students – about 200 of them. But not all have ‘paid’ fees yet These ‘fees’ are actually kept in the student’s name in the bank, and at the end of the year they want to discuss with the student on how they want it to be used – for books, for a bag, for other supplies, etc. The goal was to help with saving, and also to not make the centers entirely free. About 100 of them had ‘paid’ so far.
We went back to the original room at night, where classes IX – XII meet. My father also joined us then, and we had a very good session talking to the students (my father’s Tamil is much better than mine). We talked about future plans, what the students wanted to do career-wise and so on.
I went back a couple of days later to meet Mansoor. Mansoor was with SEED PLAN, but left because he wanted to be part of a ‘real NGO’. He has a BSc in Computer Science, and is extraordinarily good at teaching Math (SEED PLAN students’ performance in Maths had shot up when he was there). When Seed Narpanigal began we could not promise him funds so he had joined another NGO which was focused on medical camps. He was working as an accountant there. His talents seemed wasted in that position, also I felt we badly needed good quality teachers. So I discussed with Karthi about paying him a honorarium to be part of Seed Narpanigal, and he felt it was a good idea. I talked to Mansoor, and he was keen, but he also said he hoped it would continue for 3 years. I said I cannot guarantee, but Asha had plans to continue, and had no plans to stop, and it was very likely to continue for 3 years. I also met Mr. Muthukumar, who used to be with Vidiyal and has been very helpful to Karthi in admin issues like setting up the trust, opening a bank account, etc.
At the end of the visit I was very happy with the way Seed Narpanigal had progressed since they began in March 2007. There were several issues to be addressed, but I felt we could address them one by one. The best part of the work was the innovative ideas the youth came up with – the children’s magazine, library and so on. As far as the issues go, the first thing to address was the quality of the volunteer teachers, and having Mansoor join the group would be the first step.