By Adarsh Ramesh on August 23, 2013
Three days ago, Veer Santhosh, the CEO at Spoorthi Foundation contacted Project ReachOut and informed about his organization’s training session that would be held at the Government school today. We then researched a bit about their organization onhttp://www.spoorthifoundation.org/ and sent him our consent.
Today, at around 2:30, we let our registration process hang for a while and went to the school.We earnestly held our files that were showing off our brand new logo and walked the corridor, being happy with the fact that only three days after its inception, Project ReachOut had begun its first fieldwork…
Our team split up into two pools and went to two different classrooms.
Ms. Sowjanya and Ms. Roopa, engineers from MIT Mysore, were teaching English to the seventh standard students, when I knocked on the door and introduced myself and my friends/Reachers, saying, ‘We are from Project ReachOut. We are here to work for you…’
Well, everything has a first time!
Twenty kids stood up and said, unanimously, ‘Good afternoon sir,’ in their own unique dragging tone and involuntarily sparked the nostalgia. We quickly acknowledged them and took our seats in the last bench, as always. We took out our notepads and cameras and began to scribble and click.
Soujanya and Roopa patiently explained the English Grammar…in Kannada. They spoke about nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions et cetera. The kids merrily threw their hands up, saying, ‘Miss! Miss!’ and happily answered all the questions that were put forth. The teachers were commendable with their skills of interacting and keeping the class up and awake…
This continued for over fifteen minutes, by which time we had enough information from that particular classroom. So we excused ourselves and walked in to the adjoining class, the sixth standard, where twenty-four children, sitting together irrespective of the boy-girl hoopla, were being trained with the basics of computers. Mr. Veer Santosh accompanied us into the class and a while later, when he spotted us struggling to see the laptop screen, he came up to us and confessed that they had intended to use a projector for their class, but due to the unavailability of elementary yet essential components like spike buster, adapter and plug points, they couldn’t conduct the class as planned. Nevertheless, Ms. Lavanya and Ms. Sahana managed to do a great job by making use of their laptops to show the slides containing the pictures of the basic hardware components. The teaching was methodic and commensurate! This class too continued for another half hour…till 3:34, to be precise, during which time we discussed matters of prime interest with Mr. Veer.
We learnt from our discussion that Spoorthi Foundation was looking for volunteers, volunteers who could teach anything they wanted. Be it Math, Science, English, Hindi, Kannada, computers or whichever subject they might find appropriate. We were told that at the moment, there were seven members of their core committee, who handled two classes every week. But then, since most of them were offered jobs at various companies, in the coming days, their schedules would be cramped and, the teaching wouldn’t be all that effective. So, they asked us to adjure the Reachers, who have been so kind to follow Project ReachOut, to spend at least a half hour, once a week, with the kids, and to impart the knowledge they’ve amassed in all these years. Just a half hour a week means a lot more than our sense of the word “just”. It means you inspiring a part of the child, who would one day grow up to be a well educated citizen of this country, changing the very fabric of this country…
Even Spoorthi Foundation believes that “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”.
Well, what do you think?
We then added more pictures to our duffle, addressed the students, and offered to assist them with teaching tomorrow. Veer and his team joyously consented.
We asked them if we could use the projector for our class tomorrow, and, in response to our query, he told us that Spoorthi didn’t own a projector. Veer said that he borrowed it each week for the training session! We were told that they really couldn’t invest in a projector. They’d rather put it into better use by sponsoring a kid or two. Well, we get the logic. But then, it really would be more interactive and eventful for the kids to learn from a wider perspective. They’d get to visualize it better, understand the concepts more fluently and stack it in their minds for a longer time…
At this juncture, Project ReachOut puts forth a humble request to those samaritans who are capable of spending a few minutes with the kids and, who can afford to sponsor a projector, to kindly contact us or contact the CEO of Spoorthi without delay, because nothing is as dire as helping the young minds nourish.
Education is a tool that creates better human beings, and, as better human beings, it shouldn’t be all that hard for us to analyze the gravity of the situation and to take the necessary measures to alleviate the causes of this bleak situation.
Anyway, we were then made to watch a splendid video, after which the kids bade us their goodbyes. Well, they weren’t aware of the fact that they’d be seeing us even tomorrow!
0 comments:
Post a Comment