CCCL Hexaware: the project begins: by Vipul
From Cmi Spark
Date of the event/events: January 21, 2007
This article is related to the efforts of CMI Spark to educate children of construction workers at the CCCL Hexaware site
This is a first-person article (or section of an article) by Vipul
On January 21, Jayanth, Bodhayan, Ravitej and I (Vipul) went to the CCCL Hexaware site both to collect information about our target audience (children) and to try to acquire them as a target audience. This wiki is an account of our survey cum customer acquisition.
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[edit] We enter the site
Bodhayan, Jayanth, Ravitej and I entered the area of the construction site where the workers' families are located. We first tried to get the security guard, but he seemed fast asleep (or at least, somebody was soundly sleeping in the security guard's room). Though we were noticed by a lot of the workers, none of them seemed to be bothered by us and we were unsure of whom to approach and how. At my suggestion, Bodhayan took down phone numbers of the project office. We then hastily moved towards the huts.
Jayanth was the first one who took a courageous step of talking to one of the people. It turned out that this person knew Telugu, so Jayanth and Ravitej talked to him for some time. He gave us the following pieces of information:
- The people are from Andhra and Orissa and know Telugu and Oriya. They understand some Hindi as well. They do not know Tamil.
- There are quite a few children and none of them go to school (this fact was already known to us)
- To learn more and determine the feasibility of our educational programme, we should approach the project office. He gave us directions to the project office.
[edit] We go to the project office
We then traced our steps hesitantly to the project office. We entered the office, to find that the head of the office was busy in a discussion. We stood around for some time, till Jayanth decided to talk to one of the other people. He explained our situation succinctly to the man, who gave an approving nod and commended our efforts to educate the underprivileged. He said that the office head would be free after some time, and we could wait in ther adjacent room.
While we were waiting, some other people came and asked us questions like where we are studying, what we are studying, and which states we are from. Most of the people had heard about Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI) owing to its geographical proximity but were unaware of what goes on there.
[edit] We talk to the head
After some time, we talked to the head of the office. He and some other people nearby gave us the following information/made the following comments:
- The construction workers are mainly from Andhra and Orissa. Although there are many labourers from the north, those labourers have not brought their families along (aside: this is a typical difference between labour migration patterns in the north and south). In total, there are around 150 Telugu workers.
- The project office would be willing to facilitate us and provide support in the following ways: by spreading word among the workers, by arranging for them to gather at a single place, by providing a place where the workers could be taught.
- The labourers are working the whole day from Monday to Saturday and the children are alone at home; the children would be unwilling to listen to us (in the opinion of the project office people). Further, the project office people said that they themselves would not be free to help us out. Thus, Sunday seemed the only feasible day if we required help from the project office.
- The labourers often leave of their own accord due to personal/family reasons. The office head tsaid that his aim is to keep the labourers on till June 2007 but that the labourers were not predictable. He further said that he could not force the labourers to cooperate with us and it was up to us to prove our worth to the labourers.
- The labourers' children are aged between 3 and 8-10 and none of them go to school or have any kind of education.
- The project office people also asked us what prior experience we had with education. We mentioned our past experiences with children in the CMI construction site. We said that we would chalk out our educational programmes based on the requirements of the students.
[edit] The meeting concludes
The office head indicated that it was nice meeting us. We ended by introducing ourselves yet again and taking down their names. Jayanth noted down the mobile number of Rajesh, the safety coordinator of the project office. Rajesh promised to help us out by spreading the word among the workers, once we were clear about what we planned to do.
We then trudged back.
