A Centre for Learning at Sittilingi Village

Thulir Camp

In the Month of March, We held a weekend camp for the Thulir
Children. The children came to Thulir on Saturday morning at 10 am
and stayed in Thulir till Sunday evening 5 pm. For most children,
this is the first time they are staying over at Thulir and so there
was much excitement.

About 25 boys and 12 girls attended the camp in the 11 to 15 age group. Volunteers were drawn to take on various chores like cooking, serving and dish washing and cleaning. We had a mix of activities that involved the whole group
and some that were done in small groups. The small group activities
included writing small stories, riddles, doing craft work [leaf art–
animal figures made with leaves stuck on paper!!]. There were
sessions in singing/ small play rehearsals. A group discussion on
fear in the evening was also held as there is a local legend about a
spirit in our neighbourhood that keeps a few children away from Thulir on new moon days!!

We tried a small experiment during the camp . For the sessions with smaller groups, we identified a few boys and girls as groupfacilitators, and briefed them on the role they were supposed to play. They took this up very eagerly. It was interesting for us to observe that these sessions went with very minimal input from us and the groups worked with great concentration in the best possible cooperative manner and produced some very interesting work.

Carolyn, Patti and Nick  

Carolyn and Patti kept their yearly date with Sittilingi and were here from mid Dec
to mid Feb. They brought more learning materials similar to the ones they brought
last year with them and it has been a valuable addition to Thulir's resources.
Their friend Nick too had come this year and he is also enthusiastic about clay work.
They held a session with the children, and we have lots more of material to bake in the oven!!

Senthil and Vediappan are in Timbaktu!

From Thali [where the Thulir team went for an exposure visit last week—see previous post below for more on it!], Vediappan and Senthil along with Krishna proceeded towards “Timbaktu Collective” in Andhra Pradesh. We stopped at Vijay and Gracy’s farm in Thali for the night. It was a nice opportunity to visit our friends whose Sittilingi visit and interaction with Thulir children are still fresh in our minds. Timbaktu has an interesting school and children’s centre, which agreed to host Senthil and Vediappan for a one month stint. Subba Raju who is instrumental in the running of the school has been talking about giving opportunities for children to use their hands in school. This vision has taken the form of a Children’s centre where a well equipped library and workshop staffed with sympathetic instructors are available for children to explore their creativity. Senthil and Vediappan took to the place as soon as we reached and by the middle of the third day when it was time for Krishna to leave them, had settled down nicely inspite of a language problem. As this blog is being published the news is that they are happy and keeping themselves busy learning and working in the centre.

Exposure Visit

Pics: [clockwise from top left]

1. a simple compost structure at Green Foundation
2. Jayappa at Green Founation campus
3. with the Navadarshanam team

We finally decided its time for our senior students and staff to travel out of Sittilingi valley. Lots of village youth who work in Tiruppur had come for the Pongal holidays in January and trigged off a travel itch amongst our senior boys. We were also visited by Shri Jayadeva and Shri Krishna Prasad from Green Foundation, Thali, who presented a slide show of stunning images of seed conservation work done by Thali farmers and also of bio-diverse farms. We decided we must see this work for ourselves and get ideas on how to go about doing similar work here.

Thali, happens to be about 200 kms from here. We also knew of another project named Navadarshanam which has worked on bringing back to life 100 acres of degraded land. So we decided to visit these two places.

First we went to Navadarshanam, where Jyothi and Ananthu along with their team gave us a warm welcome and looked after us really well. Our team felt so at home that by evening, they had joined the residents intheir daily volleyball game and later in the common kitchen pitched in to learn to make rotis! The team speaks mostly in Kannada and Telugu [being a border village], and so it was a good opportunity to learn a bit of kannada too.

Ananthu took us around their land and campus and explained to us the various energy systems that they have installed and are using. [solar pv panels, wind mill, biogas operated genset, and charcoal making oven]. They also have a good food processing unit and we were taken around that too. Our boys were keen to know how the various products were being made and Ananthu patiently gave the recipies and explained how to go about preparing them.

The next day we went to Green Foundation’s Centre near Thali. Here we were exposed to the concept of bio diversity and the need for conservation of seeds. We were also shown different techniques to determine seed fertililty/ growing plants with drip/ micro irrigation, different methods of composting and mulching/ preparation of organic pesticides and growth promoters, etc. The high point of the visit was going to Jayappa’s farm and seeing the way he has managed to grow a wide variety of plants in a small plot of 20 cents [a fifth of an acre]. We also visited a village seed bank which is being run by the local women’s group and talked to them about how they started and achieved so much.

From Thali the next stop was Puvidham school near Dharmapuri. In 2004, students from there had visited Thulir and it ws our turn to make a return visit. Puvidham school has a hostel for its students and our team stayed there. It was a brief stay of 2 nights and a day there and we had a lot of fun talking/ singing and observing a typical day’s programme at the school.

Esther’s Stint in Sittilingi comes to an end

A nurse by training, she came to volunteer in Sittilingi tribal hospital for a year. While she has been here, Esther came to interact with the Thulir children every week for a session. A Warm friendly person, she was much liked by the children. She helped them to converse in English with her and in turn learnt Tamil from them. She taught children a variety of handicrafts such as making of dolls out of straw, sketching, painting and string games. She held a series of sessions on “exploring the senses”.

She left in Feb, back for Hamburg and we at Thulir wish her all the best and look forward to her next visit!

Dr. Velu Saravanan, a theatre professional who specialises on working with children had visited Thulir on a weekend and conducted a theatre workshop. An accomplished professional, he quickly got the children into the act and in 24hrs managed to teach them a play and rehearse sufficiently to put up a performance for the Sittilingi parents and friends from the hospital. His friend, Mr Gambhiran who specialises in writing stories for children, accompanied him and regaled us all with a story written by him. He helped three of our junior children put up a skit that had us all in splits!

More on Vigyan Ashram, Pabal

Yogesh Kulkarni of Vigyan Ashram has mailed in to say that the following website has more uptodate information on Vigyan Ashram:
www.vigyanashram.com

Further, their course is being conducted now in 23 Govt Schools.[not just the initaial three schools that we had mentioned in the report!]

Pongal is the most important festival in rural Tamilnadu and Sittilingi is no exception. The anticipation starts a week ago when houses get renovated and fresh coat of lime wash applied on all the houses. Thulir children too were eagerly looking forward and we were all a little depressed at the thought of us not being there during Pongal, for we had fixed a visit to the Pune area to visit a couple of interesting projects during the Pongal time. So we had a special session on making “kolam” in thulir and it was a lot of fun, with the whole place tranformed by a lot of laughter, fun, visitors and beautiful patterns and colours. The Thulir kitchen is functioning since the December holiday camps, and so we had hot, tasty “sundal” to eat.

Visit to Vigyan Ashram , Pabal [near Pune]

The Vigyan Ashram at Pabal was started 25 years ago by Dr Kalbag. It aims to provide multi-skill training in technologies among school children.The philosophy is that doing things with ones hands helps improve ones capacity to learn, thus the intellectual and physical pursuits are brought together. It also gives confidence to learn new skills as well as to face real life situations.

The course at the Ashram is a year long one with introduction to varied skills in the following areas: Engineering [plumbing/ welding, masonry etc.], animal husbandry and agriculture, food preservation, health, energy and environment [maintenance of various gadgets, motor winding and repair, fabrication of bio-gas plants / solar water heater etc.]

The emphasis is on doing real life projects, with proper costing done and the students labour charged for. It is a requirement of the project that each student earns at least Rs 1000 by the end of the course! This means that work is done with a lot of seriousness and every class session is challenging and intensely engaging for the student.

The programme has been running successfully for the past 25 years. That it still continues with a lively spirit and enthuses so many students to come and learn is a testament to the sound base on which the whole idea rests and the the way the course is conducted. The Maharashtra Govt is now trying to replicate the course for school students in rural areas. Interestingly, the pilot project Dr Kalbag ran in three Govt schools showed improved academic performance of the students who undertook this course compared to those who didn’t.

It is really interesting to see Vigyan Ashram very successfully adapting Nai talim ideas to contemporary rural society. It has managed to retain an “Ashram” culture of frugality [nothing is wasted…while the meals provided are wholesome, no waste is allowed to come out of the dining hall], while providing the students with all the latest tools to improve ones skills [computers, a design and fabrication lab, etc.].

The seriousness of the pursuit has not robbed the place of fun. There is much laughter and joking around, and work does-not seem to be a drudgery. This is a significant achievement. The fact that the course is a multi skill one, provides for variety [as against repetitive boredom of modern factory skills [say machining/ welding etc.]. Here variety ranges from knitting and pickle making to assembling computers!! It also importantly helps the student to get a feel for the variety of skills that are required in the real world and to be able to experiment for oneself to find which particular skill/s interest him/her the most. The student thus is in a good position to choose his/her vocation. It has also been reported that students have done well in the industry as they are able to do multi tasking and are not limited to their specialised skill. In the villages too, it is helpful that they are able to provide a variety of services and thus improve their earning capacity, as there is often not enough demand for one particular skill.

For more details of the project and Dr Kalbag’s recounting of interesting stories from the project, you may like to visit the following link:

We are really glad we made this trip to Pabal as it has clarified so many doubts we have been having regarding training the dropout children in life skills:

What skills do we give them?

How will our giving skills help them to make a living in real life?

Work in the school situation has always been a problem… how does one ensure that children’s natural enthusiasm and liveliness is preserved? Can work be more learning and fun and less of drudgery?

Will our children get stuck to one or two skills they pick up? Will they have the ability to learn newer skills and adapt themselves to changing technologies?

Is it possible for rural children to interface with and learn from newer technologies [computers, cell phones etc] without getting overwhelmed?

Visit to Phaltan

It was nice to visit Maxine Bernsten, who has been running an alternative school in Phaltan. Her warmth and humility were inspiring and we were really fortunate to be able to have many discussions on various topics from language teaching methods, to skills training of children, to impact of technology, to work of Martin Buber!!

In Phaltan we also visited ARTI, an NGO working on appropriate rural technologies. We saw very interesting technologies and found their solar dryer and charcoal briquette stoves particularly useful for our area.

Visit to Children’s Science Centre at IUCCA, Pune University

Arvind Gupta, works at this centre and has written many books on science teaching. He also teaches making of interesting science toys from ordinary, low-cost [often waste] materials. In fact in 1993, meeting with him in one of his workshops at Gandhigram, was what is responsible for our getting inspired to work with children. As always, meeting him recharged us and his child like enthusiasm rubbed off to us. When we got into the train to head back home after meeting him, one of the first things we did was to make paper caps with the children travelling with us!!

His website www.arvindguptatoys.com has illustrations on how to make some of the toys and an exhaustive list of books on children’s education as well as good children’s literature.

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Naikutti children in Thulir

This is the first posting of this year. We Wish you all a very Happy New Year ahead.

From 24th December, the Christmas holidays for the local Government. school
began. So the children were free during the day and we thought it would be
good to have them come during the day to Thulir, so that we can have extended
period of activities.

The children were happy about this [there is a consistent demand from
Sittilingi children that we open during the mornings during the holidays].
The children from Moola Sittilingi decided to stay at home and not come
during the holidays. Many of them, stayed back to help their families with
the harvest. But there was an unexpected request. A couple of children from the village Naikutti [6 km away, from where our trainee Anbu comes], expressed interest in coming to Thulir during these holidays. We were glad that Thulir could be used by even children who are not in the immediate vicinity.

From a couple of boys in the first day, it went on to become a group of nine
boys by the end of the week! Most of these boys study in Government boarding
schools away from home, and were home for holidays. A couple of them had
bicycles to cover the 6 km distance, but the rest actually walked all the way
everyday! A couple of them go to the Sittilingi school but don’t find time
in the evenings to come to Thulir as they live far away.

The activities during this week ranged from paper folding, to drawing and painting, to watching a video on bacteria. On the day of the video show, we also had Madaiyan [who is from this area, got trained as a lab technician and works in the tribal hospital. Madaiyan brought a microscope and some slides
of blood cells and also TB bacteria from the hospital. We also made a slide
of onion peel to look at plant cells.

We finally have started the cooking of diet supplement for the children
starting last month. It is a simple Ragi porridge or boiled channa right now.

This is the time of the year when Thulir usually has a lot of visitors. This
year the following visitors have come to Thulir.

Ramasubramanian:

an old friend and a mechanical engineer who specialises in design, manufacture
and erection of micro-hydro power plants, he shared his experiences of work
with the children. He also enjoys origami and taught the children some paper
folding.

Music teacher, Udaya Banu:

He teaches music at the tribal school in Gudalur Nilgiris,and is currently
visiting us as we write this. So there is much singing, laughter and fun in Thulir!!

Carolyn and Patti:

Friends of Thulir from UK, who come every winter to Sittilingi ,are back in
Sittilingi. Carolyn has brought some more learning materials from UK. Some of
the materials she had brought last time proved very useful [like the
interlocking cubes, and triangular dominoes for math learning]. Patti, you
may remember, last year had introduced clay work to the children. There is
much excitement in Thulir in anticipation of more Clay work and firing of
the oven.

Vediappan goes to Bangalore!

Vediappan, has passed his last exam of class 12. After his exams, got over in September, he felt he needed to look for a job and so has taken a job with a bag making factory in Bangalore. He has been working for the past one month there. While excited at being in a new place and getting new experiences, he is also home sick and exhausted from hard work.

His work shifts are 12 hours long each day for 6 days a week. Being Christmas/ New Year season, he is required to work for 4 hours of overtime above the 12 hr shift. He is paid 1400 rupees, half of which he has to pay his employer for board and lodge.He keeps in contact with Thulir through phone calls.

There is a common urge amongst youth of his age in Sittilingi to go out and see the world. There is also pressure to get a job and look after themselves financially. We feel this is a challenge for us. We need to work out programmes where in Thulir students can go as exchange students to other learning instituitions for a period of time to gain exposure and confidence.