Work An Hour 1999

Projects

1. VESC, Jagaddal, West Bengal
2. Anandwan (Maharogi Sewa Samiti), Warora, Maharashtra
3. Seva Nilayam, Tenkasi, TamilNadu
4. Bhoomiheen Sewa Samiti, Banda, Uttar Pradesh

Financials

VESC, Jagaddal, West Bengal

In a word, momentum sums up the effect Work An Hour 99 has had on Vivekananda Education Society for Children (VESC). VESC was founded in January 1996 to address the problem of child labourin the South 24-Parganas district of West Bengal. The group provides basic education opportunities to under-privileged children in the area, and helps them join the formal education system subsequent to their primary education. 

The society currently runs two schools at Jagaddal and Sonarpur, located in the out- skirts of Calcutta, with about 100 students at each school. Both schools have extensive community involvement. The children are taught in makeshift buildings on land owned by a well -wisher, and on the premises of the local Rotary club. Additionally, a majority of the instructors are educated housewives in the area who volunteer their time on a daily basis. Their commitment is evident from the fact that they have been with the project from the beginning with little or no compensation at all so far. However, good intentions can't sustain a project indefinitely. With very little funds and no permanent center of operations, the enthusiasm that had carried VESC so far was in danger of fizzling away. 

The Work an Hour funds helped change the situation. The funds have been used to purchase land for the Jagaddal and Sonarpur schools, and construction of the school buildings will be commencing soon. Further, the money also renewed the enthusiasm of volunteers, both at VESC, and at Asha. The teachers now know that they have some form of support and their renewed efforts are already bearing fruit. This year 20 students gained admission to government schools in the area, a quantum leap from the earlier, single digit admission rates. Work an Hour was also a sign that VESC's days of living hand to mouth were over. This realization has forced the volunteers involved with VESC to take a long term view of Asha’s efforts. The Asha * program for VESC was kick started, with 5 *s todate, and the team is working with the VESC volunteers to arrive at a long term plan for the project. Seeing the progress VESC has made and thanks to the Work an Hour trigger, the Asha *s have committed to supporting VESC for the next 10 years.

Further details about VESC can be obtained from: http://www.egroups.com/group/asha_vesc and http://www.ashanet.org/arizona/projects/VESC.html. The attached photos show the land for the new school, teachers conducting a class and monitoring the health of students. 

Swami Devendrananda, one of the mainforces behind VESC, in a letter to Asha, writes: "Happy New millennium and all the best for Asha- a hope for the neglected and deprived children of India. Please go ahead and stop not till the goal is reached, as Swami Vivekananda told. On the 27th of January VESC will celebrate the birth anniversary of Vivekananda at the own premises of the land which will be duly registered under VESC's own name. Many many thanks to all the members of Asha. Another happy news! After getting information from the website of Asha,a computer engineer, Mrs. Shyamali Chakraborty, has joined the projectof VESC soon after her return from USA. This is Asha's success to bring all the good people to VESC. Once again all the best for Asha folks for a happy new millennium."

In sum, WAH '99 was crucial in providing the momentum to reach the project's goals; it was just the beginning, the journey continues. 
 
 

Anandwan (Maharogi Sewa Samiti), Warora, Maharashtra

The government did not clear the original location on which the school/shed was to be built. As a result, Dr. Vikas Amte and the others decided to move the school project within the premises of the institution using some existing buildings. The hostels/living quarters are under construction and also will be utilizing existing buildings. Nobody at Anandwan believes in getting outside help for carpentry, masonry etc. This seems to hamper the speed of completion at times, but this is also extremely important as it goes to the core of the self-reliance philosophy much like the zero-overhead policy of Asha. 

The structure of the vocational school is ready with new tin sheds on the roof. There is a large signboard outside that announces the project as "Asha Gram supported by Asha St. Louis (USA) and AID". The looms for the school have been ordered and will arrive soon. The work and vocational training is already in progress for greeting cards, cloth bags, repairing of steel cupboards, bamboo wall-hangings and decorative pieces. Most of the boys and girls are local and are being trained by the existing workers (who are trained in-house). The work is done in two shifts. The first one is from 5 am (yes, the day begins early in Anandwan!) to 11.30 am. The afternoon session starts at 1 PM. All the students/workers stay on the campus. There are separate housing dormitories for boys and girls. 

More details on the project can be found at
http://www.ccrc.wustl.edu/~asha/projects/anandwan/anandwan.html
 
 

Seva Nilayam, Tenkasi, Tamil Nadu

With Work An Hour funds, a school has been constructed on the Gurukulam Premises, adjoining the current orphanage. Value-based education and vocational training is provided in addition to the school curriculum. It will have classes from III to X (currently III to VII exist and are conducted in the orphanage rooms) and will mitigate the need for the girls to travel 3 kilometers to go to the nearest government high school. 

The new school has four rooms (each 25x22 feet, 22 feet is the minimum width specified by the authorities for a school room) and a open hallway running along the four rooms. The building has a total of 3000 sqft and costs a total of Rs. 12 lakhs. The amount not covered by WAH funds is being raised locally. The school, called "Asha Hall" is ready and the inauguration ceremony is on 9th July, 2000.

Having initially started with the orphanage children, the founder Mr. Arivazhagan has decided to also take in rescued child laborers to the school. The district collector, knowing of Mr. Arivazhagan's work wanted to work with him in educating these children. The government will be providing salary for 3 teachers. The school is serving the orphanage inmates along with 50 rescued child laborers.

Pictures from the project are available at:
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/man/sevanilayam/pictures.html
 
 

Bhoomiheen Sewa Samiti, Banda, Uttar Pradesh

"I don't think I ought to say anything at a personal level, but, yes, I can write to you about how things are starting to make a difference and what the support of Asha means to the work at Aau.

Unlike most organizations, we had been running our project entirely out of our own meagre funds, and this was a most serious and continuing constraint in our work. Such a constraint eventually becomes something more than just a financial one. It begins to set serious limits to the imagination of the organization. Necessity has been said to be the mother of invention. In truth creativity is curbed by necessity. The emergence of possibility is the source of creativity. Therefore the very first thing that the support of Asha has done is to enhance the confidence and creativity of the organization itself. It has opened new vistas for us by releasing us from the day to day financial worries that had become a perpetual drag on our Society and a torment for us. The management has been freed for applying its mind to the task of giving shape to the vision that is its inspiration.

The project that we are running has been conceived in the context of the dynamics of our society. The old feudal structures are gradually breaking down in our villages, but there is enormous resistance to this change from the old vested interests. The fundamental problem of backward areas is how to release the poor from an undemocratic and outdated economic and cultural system. Education is one of the most powerful instruments for this purpose, and it is now universally admitted that basic education is an entitlement that tends to liberate the poorest social classes. Asha's support opens the way for realizing the potential of education as an instrument of social change.

Asha's support matters in yet another fundamental way. For generations our nation has maintained a system whereby certain categories have been compelled to live below subsistence levels, physically deprived and psychologically broken. We are now in a position to provide a healthy and joyous environment for the children coming from such a background. We are certain that such children will grow up to become self-respecting citizens who will not merely improve the quality of their own lives but also contribute to the welfare of the country. We have set up a Children's park with slide, merry-go-round, sea saw, jungle gymnasium, etc. The children are so excited about it that, far from missing school, they tend to come a few minutes before time so as to have a go at it. Their happiness is one of the great joys of my own life. In addition we have appointed a whole time music teacher, and now there's fun for the children singing folk songs, nursery songs, patriotic songs, bhajans, and playing the harmonium and tabla or dholak. It was Plato's view that music was needed for the soul and gymnastics for the body. We have included both - for the all-round growth of the child.

We are also shortly going to start showing educational and children's films on a video system that we plan to purchase. It will help expose children to other worlds, such as those of sea, forest, mountains, stars, etc. It will certainly stimulate their minds and fire their imagination. Towards the same end we have started the practice of taking the children out for educational excursions. Our view is that every child, by the time he is of 14 years, should have travelled by train and been outside his district. This year the children of class 8 went to Allahabad by train, stayed their for 3 days, saw all worthwhile places and then returned on a hired bus that dropped them at or near their villages. A science club is also in the offing, the object being to make children realise that science is not merely a syllabus 'subject' but is an activity, a joyful activity. It has been suggested to us that science education should preferably also be made utilitarian by teaching children how to make a chargeable accumulator torch battery, for example. We are exploring this possibility, and the fact that we can think of doing so is wholly on account of the confidence generated by Asha's support.

At another level our effort is to recover for teaching its true function of co-operating with the child in his learning processes. To this end we are encouraging our teachers, especially in the primary section, to assist the child in his natural curiosity and activity. We plan to set up a visually rich and stimulating library with picture books that the children will be at liberty to pore over and enjoy. There will be puzzles to solve, models to make, drawings to complete, blocks to build in the form of houses etc, and games where the child will be asked to find the difference between two similar drawings or photos. All these activities are child-centred and help the child to grow in all his faculties. Simultaneously, such activities induce the teacher to change his attitude to the child.

One element of our endeavour is to contribute to the process of generating new values in rural areas that are appropriate to the age we live in. Backward areas are characterized by outdated, feudal thinking and the dominant thought there tends to be illiberal, casteist, and patriarchal. The need of the country, on the other hand, is that we respond to the challenges of the contemporary age, which is possible only if we first develop a sense of the contemporary. In backward areas this is an additional burden that educational institutions must carry, a task that they must perform. And for this purpose we try to generate a critical awareness of social evils and strive to inculcate some knowledge and understanding of the freedom movement as well as the intellectual and cultural renaissance that preceded it. We hold regular cultural functions and enact plays that carry a social message, especially dramatized versions of stories from the great Hindi writer Premchand.

Just as fundamental from the point of view of social change is our decision to concentrate on educating the most deprived children in rural areas. What such children require first and foremost is a sense of belonging, the ability to socialize and adjust in the environment of the school. Further, there must exist, or be created for them, a natural transition from the freedom of playfulness to the more conformist requirements of a formal institution. An abrupt entry into the alien world of a formal school can be very unpleasant for deprived first generation children. We have therefore evolved a system where the first 5 years of primary education are spent in a wholly non-formal setting that serves also to introduce the children to the properly formal setting of classes 6 to 8, which too we run. Of course inculcation of values is not fund-based. But the fact that there is a general movement in all directions, on account of financial support from Asha, imperceptibly validates the values that we stand for.

In the senior section, i.e. classes 6 to 8, we have also introduced certain trades so as to serve those strictly utilitarian objectives that can never be ignored in a society as poor as ours. Knowledge of these trades will increase the job-potential of students and give them the confidence to fend for themselves when they set off into the wide world. The trades we are starting or have started are the following: sheet metal; bee-keeping; tailoring; typing; and learning how to make data entry in the computer, saving it, and printing it out. The idea is to combine the new with the old, the most modern with the most traditional. The response of the children to the trades is excellent, and it is obvious that this utilitarian activity caters to a felt need.

The ultimate objective of the project is to develop a model for combining the aesthetic (music etc) and the utilitarian (skill development, computer awareness) and integrating them both with the formal syllabus for first generation students belonging to the scheduled castes in backward areas. And because the aim is to develop a model, it cannot stop with this single endeavour but must seek to influence the area as a whole by interaction with other institutions. The support of Asha has made it possible to work towards the development of this model, and it has also made it possible to conceive all these other growing possibilities.