Further help from AID India: February 4-10
From Cmi Spark
Date of the event/events: February 4 - 10, 2007
Contents |
Meeting with AID India volunteers
On Saturday, February 3rd, 2007, Padma, Kshitij and Jayanth met some volunteers from AID India at Birla Planetarium.
Dr. Balaji Sampath, the coordinator for AID India activities in Chennai, spent some time with the Spark members and introduced them to a volunteer named Anitha.
Suggestions made by Dr. Balaji Sampath
- We could make use of the language kit(s?)(they have one for Telegu and
he said we could prepare one in Bengali along similar lines) to teach the kids their mother tongue; this, he said, has proven to be quite effective in the past, with the kids being able to learn the language within 2/3 months itself. He said the kits are readily available; I can go pick it up from their office at Gopalapuram anytime.
- He said that teaching the kids some Science, by availing their Basic
Science Kit, would also be a good idea as(going by their past experiences) kids generally find this quite interesting.
- When we raised the issue of volunteers being sent here to give us
some training, he said that could also be arranged(he said they have some volunteers working in Kelambakkam) and he said we can fix up the details with Anitha. We then told Anitha that we would first like to know what time-slot will be convenient for them and then fix up the timings accordingly(that we are students from different batches and finding a common time slot during weekday-mornings would be difficult, was conveyed). Anitha then made us fill a form giving the details of where are from, contact details, etc. and promised to get back to us.
Further actions following the meeting
Padma has arranged for the teaching kit to be collected from the Gopalapuram office. The Telugu teaching kit was not available but the basic science kit has been collected. The kit will be handed over to Spark on Saturday, 10th February.
Other information collected by Jayanth
Jayanth contacted Janaagraha, the social work group which he works with back at home in Bangalore. They got him in touch with some people in the Chennai wing of AID India (the same one for which Dr. Balaji Sampath is the coordinator). From these people, he got further inputs and suggestions.
Regarding language teaching
It seems that much of the language teaching focus in Tamil Nadu has been in Tamil so AID Chennai cannot directly help with providing language teaching kits for other languages. However, one of the volunteers suggested:
If you have vols who can teach in telugu, then I'll get you the contact of our chapters in AP, who have translated some of the AID Chennai material into Telugu. These include story cards (short stories on a double-sided A4 laminated sheet with pictures) and the reading kit. Bengali will be tough though....
The volunteers also indicated that preparing the teaching kits was not hard and we could make out own ones patterned on theirs in Bengali, though it would be difficult for them to get direct help for us on Bengali.
Regarding science teaching
The volunteer(s) urged us to focus on science teaching and make science teaching fun. This ties in with the advice given by Dr. Balaji Sampath as well.
Names and contacts of people who could help us out
General
- Dr. Balaji Sampath: the phone number and contact details are with Padma
- Anitha: The phone number and contact details are with Padma
For reading and science kits
These are people mentioned in a mail to Jayanth:
- Chandra at AID Chennai office has developed reading kits in Tamil
- Gomathi has worked on science kits and on making science experiments fun
- Damu is good at doing fun activities but teaches in Tamil
