The next episode: Evening School

My last post was dated April 13th. I'm writing after so many days because of two reasons- first, the semester end was approaching and I had a lot of lag to cover up, and second- because someone told me that this had started looking like "my blog" rather than "YATN blog". So I thought it would be nice to give writing a break. Though I had been requesting my colleagues to write something, but probably they are not particularly fond of writing- so here I am again!

The next big thing that we were to do was to start a large scale active involvement of the IISER community. For this, we started an "Evening School". Though the ideas had started to crystallize in the winter break itself, the final execution of the activity could not be until February. All the new members together with the old ones sat down and drafted a scheme for the school- we had finished that in 3 days, by 15th February.

The main idea behind the school was to prepare the older kids for Sikhya and to interact with and teach the littler ones. We had documented nearly 80 kids in the last few days and now, the task was to divide them into classes. The school timings were decided to be from 6pm to 7:30pm. But before that, we had to decide how the activity was to be organized. We divided ourselves into four groups- 1) Organizing, 2) Teaching, 3)RAW and 4)Fun Activities. RAW is Research and Analysis Wing (and it is obviously not inspired by the RAW that operates in India. We call it so because the name is fancy!). We initially made ten teaching groups (two more were added subsequently) and divided the labour kids according to their age and knowledge. Each group was assigned to two students in the Teaching group. The classes for each group were to be held on alternate days. The RAW was responsible for framing the course structure in collaboration with the teachers. The organizers were supposed to make resources available for the evening school. Besides, there were "Shuttlers" who would go to different areas to fetch the kids, keep a record of who was coming, and then assure that the kids went back home safely. The Shuttlers were mainly the organizers, along with some teachers. The fun activity people were given the job to hold some hands-on and fun activities for the kids on the weekends. And thus, we started the first evening school in IISER Mohali.

postcards

There are still millions who only dream of school.YATN is helping some of
them.You all are familiar with YATN and its objectives. Join your hand
with us ,with the innocent children so that their dreams remain no longer
dreams.
We are trying to raise funds by selling postcards which uses iiser mohali
...labor kids drawings & paintings.Today was the 1st day of cards selling but
we saw not much response.Come forward and help us!

last date of selling cards:23 apr.,saturday
venue :canteen area

note: you can buy cards and pay as per your pleasure(minimum price per
cars-20 INR)try to buy as much as you can.

...Abhishek
YATN member

A Tasty Morsel

I have adopted this title from somewhere. I call it a "Morsel" because this experience is something we need to chew upon. And why it is tasty follows:

First of all, our plan did not go as per our ideology. The kids were never made to realize that they should not accept anything they had not put any effort for. And ingraining this attitude in them is very important. This way, they will start respecting the efforts of the people around them, and more importantly, realize the true worth of their own efforts.

Second, the parents have started taking our efforts for granted. This is not an issue of our ego, but such an attitude affects our activities adversely. It is impractical for us to hang around with the kids a lot of time, and at the end of the day, it is the parents who decide for the kids. This attitude begets inactivity on their part, which once again, defeats the purpose, as then, the education of the children may not be sustained once they leave IISER Mohali.

And finally, the best part, the part due to which the morsel is tasty, is the reaction of the parents and children when we gave them clothes. Some of them were happy, but many of them retorted and complained that they would not have bought such filthy clothes for their kids. This is what happened- it is a fact. So next time when you go around their slums, remember- how ever their living conditions maybe, they have self-respect. They may come to you asking for donations, but then they expect something "worth them". So before closing, let me tell you where we went wrong, and for that, let me tell you my favourite joke (as my father told me):

There was a bus driver who went around his usual path. One day, a big fat man boarded the bus from a stop. The driver asked him for money of ticket, but he simply replied,"Big John doesn't pay!" The bus driver, a small man could not gather courage to argue, and so remained silent. This went on for a few more days, with the big man replying,"Big John doesn't pay!" The driver was very distressed due to the situation. So he joined a gym, built some muscles, and one day, decided to confront the big man. And once again, when he asked for ticket and got the same reply, he rudely retorted,"Why doesn't Big John pay?". The big man replied,"Because Big John has a Bus Pass..."

All I mean to tell you is that before going out to solve a problem, first make sure if there really is a problem. This was applicable in our case.

A Failed Attempt

It was either the 5h or 6th of February, for which we had planned the competition. The previous day, Karishma and Pradeep had talked to the authorities of the nearby Chilla Public School and got the keys for the next day. Harshita, Sharmi and their friends had labeled and gift wrapped one clothe, along with a woolen cap in every gift. There were nearly 75 gifts we had prepared to give away.

We had decided that it will be a post lunch activity. The ones living in the chandigarh campus reached Mohali by 12:30 pm, had lunch and started preparing for the drawing competition. The people active at that time were Abhilasha, Anshu, Anuj, Dilraj, Harshita, Sharmi, Pradeep, Karishma, Mehreen, Kapil, Hitesh, Manish and me. Some others were attracted by the hustle-bustle of the kids, but they just hung by to see what was happening.

The duly wrapped gifts were stuffed into a store room. We went to call the kids from their homes. The cold was biting, no one wanted to come out of their homes. We persuaded them by telling that if they won the competition, they would get prizes. On the first go, not many came- there must have been about 30 kids, which included some really small ones who could barely walk. So we started with them. We gave them the stuff they would need for drawing- we sat down with them and helped the really small ones draw something. Everyone was busy, either sharpening a pencil, searching for some colour, or simply tending to a kid. It was a good environment and we were really enjoying ourselves.

After some fifteen minutes, when some four year old got restless, we decided that we should let him go. So Harshita wrote down his name and gave away a shiny, blue gift. He had come with his father and two other siblings. And so, the man went back with his three children, all with gifts.

The next fifteen minutes saw order. And then, chaos broke loose. The reason was palpable. Those gifts had attracted attention of other workers. They got the idea that something was being given away. And so, they came with their kids to collect their "share". The YATN people had to spring to their heels to manage the kids, and more so, their parents. This was something that would obviously happen- but we were unprepared. Some wrapped more gifts while others tried to contain the chaos. In another one hour, all the kids had drawn as they wanted and got their "prizes". By the end, we had give away some 110 gifts. Even when the goal was achieved, the purpose was defeated.

The Central Ideology

And so is the story of the preparations for donating winter wear. However, every action has some ideology behind it. And here, the main ideology was that the kids must not accept anything for which they never put any effort, that they should not accept donations. The idea is that they should not live at mercy of people around them- they should learn to earn their living, and it is one of our goals that we develop such an attitude in them.

We initially decided that one weekend when we go to the kids, we just hold a small painting competition for the kids and give away the clothes as prizes. But then many kids would have been left. After many vague (and probably senseless) suggestions, mostly by me, and a two hour long argument, we decided that we would spread the word among kids about the painting competition one day, and then, the next day, we shall have it, so that we see maximum participation.

The way we arrived at was probably the best possible at the time- however, it was not good enough.

The New Task

The semester started in January. The awful winters of the north welcomed the students back to the campus. By then, the MS09 and MS10 batch and the girls of MS08 batch had shifted to the Mohali campus. And we had a plan yet to be executed.

Come winters, and one of the first things such a society could do is to make available for the labour kids some warm clothes. And so did we. From November of last year, we had started planning out how and what we shall be doing. But before all that- hey! we needed the warm clothes!!!

We put a carton near the security check and started sending out emails to students and faculty requesting them to donate warm clothes for kids of age upto 15 years. To make our message more effective, we decided that someone should go to faculty, in person, tell them about what we were doing, and ask them for clothes. And you can very well guess who these lucky (read as poor...) guys had been who were given the job- the "new" recruits, Sharmi, Harshita and Pradeep!

You would have laughed your lungs out (as I did) if you heard their first-hand experience. Nevertheless, let me reproduce some for you. By the way, I shall be calling the trio Har-Shar-Par [though they will kill me for that ;) ] for short hand. As far as I remember, I was studying in the library when Harshita called me out for some "urgent" talk. I came out, when Sharmi joined- Abhilasha came by and then experiences and emotions of Har-Shar erupted. They had apparently started with none other than Prof. Ramesh Kapoor. They had then gone around to some other half-a-dozen faculties before going to Prof. Sanjay Mandal. Apparently, they spent a jolly half an hour with him. I believe they had gone to ask him for donations- so had they thought. But as it turned out, instead, the professor told them everything about chemistry, from atoms to ingredients of a toothpaste. Till date I don't know if Har-Shar could put their point across, but I am sure that their knowledge about apparently useless things doubled!

We tried to cool them down by telling them that this was a new experience- but really, these (the faculty!) were a bit too much for someone in their first semester. So, we asked them to take Pradeep with them.

Overall, the trio did a good job. If you disagree with me, then take a look at the donations that we received. It had clothes from size for a one year old all the way up to a fifty year old well-fed man! No doubt, people had donated rather open-heartedly. It was a rather amusing exercise to sort the clothes according to size- 'cause in the way, we found a packet of diapers and the kurtas and shirts of the faculty that they had worn just the day before! The final task of getting the clothes washed was taken up by Amit sir.

After all the preparations, we had to delay the job as most of the kids had gone home, and our end-sems were approaching. We postponed it to after December.

Recounting the memories...

We are going to be established as a registered society from being an informal group. But this has been a long journey, with all kinds of experience. As you may realize, all that has been missing from the blog- the activities that we organized this semester. It would have been nice if you could get to hear the first hand experience of everyone in the program. However, not everyone has the streak to go out and write about their experience. So now, when the semester is wrapping up, let me recount some of my experiences related to the kids and the group and wrap up before a new start.

Longest Meeting of YATN

Yesterday was the longest meeting ever of YATN. The agenda of discussion was the final draft of MoA of YATN. Gagan, Danish, Hitesh and Nitish had volunteered to formulate the MoA and did the job very well. The entire idea of registering as a society is a very big leap for YATN. We had begun as a small group who went to interact with the kids of IISERm labors' and we realise by number of people interested in YATN that it is much more that that.

The best part of the entire effort is that now we have been able to mobilize a lot more IISERM students into the effort. Now we are a group which has all MS, PhD and faculty of IISER - all performing different activities of YATN and contributing to the cause. It has become a community effort.

Due to the efforts of IISER students and Yatn kids (read the Ravinder story!), we have been able to convince the school Sikhya to begin special classes for age inappropriate students. By the first week of May, about 50 of our kids will be going to school (many of them for the very first time!!:-)).

This raises many other responsibilities. We have to ensure that their going to school goes on. It is very easy for the students to get disinterested if the school teacher scolds them. This is very common and I have been called by the school many times to ensure that the kids dress, bathe, brush their teeth before coming to school. Some of our kids were cleaned and bathed in school. This was so embarrassing for them that they did not go to school the next day :-(. These are very small problems compared too the ones we have overcome as a group and I think we need to seriously think about ways to solve the problem.

It is important that all of us realise that for most of the kids, we are the motivation to go to school. Their parents might not think it as important and a yatn kid might even stay at home and look after the young/cook/fool around. We are the only people who tell them it is important and we need to ensure we keep doing that so that they are encouraged to go to school everyday.

Our YATN is looking concrete now :-)

I hope the ideas with which it was begun are propagated to our junior batches because as Keshav puts it ;-) -

"हम जाने वाले हैं :-("

The Sikhya experience

I do not know if some one has mentioned about Sikhya in any previous blogs but I'll do so here. In order to get our YATN kids into mainstream education the first agenda had always been to send them to a full fledged school and motivate them enough that even if they move away from this space they find new schools for themselves (maybe run by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan !) and get themselves enrolled. In this regard we had in the first year of our functioning enrolled many of our students to the nearby Chilla school (that what our kids call it!). The outcome was initially very good, but eventually numbers reduced and only a few of our students continued on in the school. The reasons for it were mainly (as much as I can hypothesise!) that the Chilla school was Punjabi medium and had less infrastructure. Punjabi medium would have been a problem as many kids had migrated from Jharkhand, Bihar, U.P., Orrisa, Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh and that too not long ago. As far as the infrastructure is concerned, the school has a total of two classrooms for conducting classes till standard 5. Here we started looking for other schools and were helped by Anu ma'am who referred us to Sikhya - www. sikhya.org We went on to visit the school and it was everything that a good private school would be and interestingly had the specific aim of teaching kids of slums, migratory labourers etc. So they had devised special strategies to ensure the students get interested in education. Our interim agenda became to send these students off to Sikhya. The entire team of YATN participated in order to fulfil this aim. Our evening school teachers and R.A.W. (Research Analysis Wing) ensured that we could identify kids in the age group of 5-7 years and get them admitted to the preparatory class. These were a group of 25-30 kids who could be admitted. The organisation team ensured that the affidavits to be submitted to the school and the school admission forms were filled on time for school admission. The school helped YATN as it relaxed its admission criteria to 7 years for the prep class. Even the Auto Bhayiya whom we arranged for talking the kids to and from school everyday charged the least possible price per kid after learning that YATN is attempting to teach labour kids. Finally after the effort of all the YATN members (IISER M community!), and Sikhya and even Auto Bhayiya, we were able to send 18 kids to Sikhya :-) It has now been a week the kids are going to school. I urge all of us to interact with the kids and ask them about their experience (informally) and appreciate and motivate them to keep the continuity. Because in essence, Y.A.T.N. does not exist if we do not interact (in the form of evening school or otherwise with the kids!)