Discussion with Balaji Sampath: by Padma

From Cmi Spark

Date of the event/events: January 28, 2007

This is a first-person article (or section of an article) by Padma

As discussed in the January 23 meeting, I spoke to Dr. Balaji Sampath (The friend of Dr. K. S. Balaji whoworks for the Chennai wing of AID India) today asking him for some guidance for teaching, while giving him details of our current plans.

[edit] Points I conveyed

• Given where our campus is located, we will be able to operate only in the neighbourhood of Siruseri.
• I told him that we have already located a target group at the construction site nearby where there are kids in the age group 3-10 mainly from Andhra, Orissa and West-Bengal.
• I also told him that we plan to teach the kids some basic skills (like arithmetic, etc) that the kids will be able to carry along even if they are not able to go through formal education.
• I also told him of our previous venture to teach the kids at our own construction site; of how we managed to teach Satish some basic arithmetic, English, etc.

[edit] Points raised by him

• Support from AID India: Dr.B S said that he could easily arrange for some volunteers from his organisation to come and give us some training on campus or possibly even accompany us to the construction site as there are a sufficient number of us interested (I told him there are 15 of us when there actually seem to be 20).
• Orientation/training programme in February: To begin with, he said we could attend this function that has been organized by his association, where kids(including many orphans) from various villages would be gathering on the 3rd and 4th of February, at Children's Park, Guindy. He said we could discuss further details with him then.
• Daily programme: When I explained to him that currently Sundays are the only feasible days for this project(having explained the background of the children, the information provided to us and our plans of slowly gaining their trust and extending to weekdays(evenings)), he made this suggestion of hiring a local volunteer(who could be paid a small sum on a monthly basis, which would be taken care of by his organisation) for keeping the kids engaged on all days, which would make it easier for us to have our project running on a daily basis. This was put forth as a major suggestion as this seems to be a working plan in many other places. Note: We will have to get the local volunteer, AID-India can help with the finances.
• Further contact by email: Finally, he asked me to send him a mail so that he can get in touch with us and forward further details to us. He said he will put us through to a volunteer named Sangeetha in his organization. I also promised to send him a link to our wiki-page.