The past 6 months

June – November 2011

     The academic session started with the first hand experience of rubbing shoulders with the regular school system. We were trying to admit our son in the 10th class, who was in Adharshila (an unrecognized learning centre) for the first 9 years. The papers, affidavits and all. We experienced the anguish of the hapless adivasi parents who have to run for the various certificates from panchayats to tehsils for months to get their children admitted. The photocopy shops make a heist. In this month farmers are running in search of two things - seeds and loans for the farm and certificates and hostels for the kids.

     Even though the rains tested every body’s patience the meeting for new admissions was a moral booster. New, excited children and parents. Nice way to forget those who have decided to leave. Even more encouraging this year was the group of people who wanted to open a new centre in Roshmal. Kukna an AMS activists mobilized parents of 3 villages to start a Centre in their village. He listed 35 parents, keen to start the new centre, formed a committee to manage the school and brought them to Adharshila for a one day meeting with us to understand the philosophy and structure of Adhrshila. Ultimately this didn’t work out as they couldn’t find anybody to run the centre. But it resulted in two young boys and girls coming to Adharshila for the teacher training program while studying for the 10th exam from open school. We hope they will be able to run such children’s centres after one or two years – a future plan. The children of Sakad village took lots of vegetable seeds and some tree plants for their homes.

     The 4th issue of Yuvaniya, a magazine for youth came out. We established a good rapport with the workers of Muskaan, an NGO working with Gond children in Bhopal slums who came to help in typing and editing the issue. We are currently working on the 5th issue, a special issue for the Adivasi Ekta Sammelan to be held in Rajasthan in January. We are after the main leaders of the Ekta Parishad to write for the issue. Through Yuvaniya, 4 writing workshops for adivasis were conducted from where most of the material for the magazine was generated.

Kamal

     Ex students – one of our oldest stars, Majali did us proud by agreeing to go to Bomliya paat a settlement (not a recognized village) in Burhanpur 200km away, to help the community and Adivasi Ekta Sangathan restart a school  which they had started three years ago. Another oldie, Kamal has taken a six month gap after graduation to visit organizations in other tribal areas. He went to Jharkhand and stayed with Arvind Anjum for 3 weeks. In the Adharshila Scholarship program one student of class 12th is being supported.

     Children are encouraged to participate in social and political events in the area. The Adharshila children’s song and dance troupe performed at two adivasi sammelans in Maharashtra and MP. Right now also they have gone to Zoida village in Maharashtra. Maybe the Naatak India Company will get to perform in Rajasthan. We are still trying to get sponsors ( hint for SRUTI ). The children performed a play in the school on 15th August, depicting the story of Independence. The senior students participated in two rallies held in Sendhwa and Pansemal. Two teachers also attended programs of an adivasi organization in the Pati block.

      

     Adharshila has been taking up the role of training teachers of community schools. In the first half this year 5 trainings were held. Two in the Kakrana School in Alirajpur district. Two boys from Burhanpur stayed here for a month for teacher training to help in the Burhanpur School. One training cum meeting was organized for adivasi teachers of five schools run by adivasi sangathan/communities. 15 teachers from the 5 schools participated. A great feeling of camraderie was felt amongst the teachers. Some common programs were decided – drawing workshops and folk story documentation. About 50 folk stories were collected in these schools in 3 districts. A Kahani Marathon was conducted at Adharshila where about 60 children, age 8 years – 18years and some villagers narrated stories for about 4 days, two hours everyday. About 15 children made illustrated books out of their stories. Hopefully we will be able to print a collection of some of these stories by the end of this academic year.

     In this vein three student teachers from Adharshila volunteered for a month at a remote school run by Jagrut Adivasi Dalit Sangathan in Barwani District. We too were invited to take a course at TISS, Tuljapur to do an Educations Skills course for the final year BSW students. It was interesting to compare there infrastructure with ours both for 150 children. Jayashree conducted a women’s training for the Satna group voluntarily.

     Lot of work on basic curriculum development was completed. Most of the math curriculum for the primary and some modules for the middle schools were made thanks to Mansi. Work on English and Hindi language primers also went ahead. Jayashree tried her hand at illustrations quite successfully. Two interns from TISS, Mumbai, doing Masters in Elementary Education helped document two social science modules one each in Geography and History.

     Vibhore was with us for 3 months intermittently, under the Adharshila Fellowship Program. While volunteering he was engaged in thinking about the question of bringing social change through education.     

     

     This year a poultry was started by the two students who went for training in the summers. So now we have an organic farm, cattle shed and poultry, looked after by the children under the guidance of adults. The poultry has more than 50 birds, starting with 7.  the organic farm has given us about 4 quintal veggies uptil now. This year we also have a papaya plot. These activities are important for us as one of the basic premise of this educational program is that we – adults and children - should engage in the activities that are done by the villagers. One group has made a potato plot for themselves. Another group developed a herbal garden which lasted for 4 months. 

 

Students and teachers constructing the hen cage

Our newest residents

Field preparation

Group fertilizer preparation

     Many inhouse workshops were conducted for and by children on Origami, craft, math, story writing etc. Children of one group have become avid bird watchers. There is an origami group. At least 6 children have tried there hand at violin. Two are still persisting. Two parent meetings were conducted where the children presented what they had learnt. And kabaad se jugaad is happening always. First there was the kite fever – kites being made from plastic, then there were the plastic balls, bhingris etc.

     Some friends insist on coming to Adhrshila and they claim that they get a lot of inspiration. One such group is INSPIRE who bring NRI children to see the ‘real’ India. People from two NGOs also visited us. A group of villagers who wanted to start a school also stayed for a day. Some businessmen from Indore visited the ‘Sakad Ashram’ through some other friends. And lastly these days we have the annual visitor the Wagtail from the Himalayas.
    
     Construction of a kitchen extension shed was done and the mess hall was partitioned to make two rooms.

     We are 100 children and nine adults. A group of 8 senior children help Shevanta, Shanta and Badri bhai manage the show. This year almost all the day scholars have vanished due to the RTE and the stipend being given to children.

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Life at Adharshila

The full post with more intricate details & more snaps can be read at http://sameersampat.blogspot.com/

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Been at Adharshila for 6 weeks and they have already started poking fun of my pensiveness here (they also sell these pretty cool greeting cards as a fundraiser that you can see and read about here) There is a lot to write about and not much time on the net, so I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

My Daily Schedule (though schedules at Adharshila can be changed at any minute for a variety of reasons)

5:00am-7:00am Yoga and meditation in a most serene environment. Its worth being here just for these 2 hours everday, starting meditation under a blanket full of stars and ending yoga as the sun rises. Some of the kids who have the motivation to wake-up early do so. Oddly enough, its a different group of 3 or 4 everyday.


7:00am-8:00am Teach a math class to kids studying for the 10th standard exams.

8:00am-10:00am Farming time! I can't say that I have mastered anything, but I have dabbled in a few aspects of farming. I've been involved in mulching, planting, adding fertilizer (made of plants, i.e. natural) and picking vegetables. I've taken to the ghethi (pick axe - pictured below) as it feels like productive work that also helps build muscles (which I need). Much of my gethi work is towards some pretty interesting experiments we are trying to level our plots and run-off areas to maximize soil and water retention.





10:00am-11:00am Teach a math class for kids in the 6th or 7th to boost their confidence with numbers. I play alot of math games with the kids, it makes for a nice "rest" after the work in the farm.



11:00am-1:00pm Cook and eat lunch. I have the option of eating in the mess with the kids, but I am keen on learning how to cook, so Amit and Jayshree suggested that the best way to learn is just jump straight into it and cook your own meals. Having to sustain on what what Mahalaxmi and I cook has been great motivation to improve our cooking skills. Our lunch consists of daal and rice. Dinner of roti and shubjzi. I've gotten decent at making those 4 items, although part of the reason that our food tastes good to us is that we usually end up pretty hungry by meal times. The biggest kick for me is being able to go out to our farm and pick some fresh palak (spinach) to put into our daal!


1:00pm-2:15pm Teach the whole 6th and 7th standard math. Over this past week this group has been put into self-learning mode. Basically each student was asked what they wanted to learn and they individually came up with a list of things like juggling, about America, music, organic farming, etc. Later they were guided to create a timetable for their da so that they can learn what the set out to learn. Eventually they are to check-in with one of the adults update us on their progress.

A few things we have kept "compulsory" for these kids, one of which is my math class, with is now shortened to 1:00-1:45p. But most kids had math on their list and I think they enjoy the class. Somedays after my class, Jayshree teaches a class on the basics of organic farming to the kids interested which I sit in on.



2:25pm-3:30pm Break, shower, wash clothes, clean room, etc.


3:30p-4:30p Teach math to the student teachers. The older kids at Adharshila have a lot of responsibility and really do a good job taking leadership of this place. Most older kids are teaching the younger while also independantly studying (i.e. self-stuyding) for their own exams. They also look over much of the day-to-day maintainence of the ashram. I'm pretty impressed by much of this group.

4:30pm-5:30pm Play time for the students. I've used this time to play cricket, read, talk with folks or learn some Bareli songs from the kids. With cricket, the kids have my weakness. I can't hit the "low ball", a ball that bounces in a patch of dirt and thus doesn't come high off the ground. Def. a speciality ball only used on our pitch. Last week I taugt the kids a modified version of baseball which they thought was odd but enjoyed.

5:30p-6:30p Shramdaan - all the kids at ashram are involved in some sort of physical work, generally cleaning or farming. I usually join in on work based on how tired I am. If I am looking for a workout, I try to pick axe. Otherwise its usually picking leaves for mulching.

6:30p - onwards Cook and eat dinner. A few nights we have used this time to have meetings to discuss math curriculum that we hope to build over the next year. Otherwise, if I have energy, I'll engage in conversations with people at the ashram, Jayshree, Amit, Mahalaxmi, Badri Bhai, Devika Ben, Yatin, the kids. Sometimes these conversations take pretty philisophcial turns and end past midnight, usually because I end up questioning the heck out of the people here, esp. Amit and Jayshree, mainly for my own clarity on the direction of my life. Luckily the seem to not mind me keeping them up. At least they haven't said anything yet ;-)

And to end it, I hadn't shaved for the past 6 weeks (out of laziness) and grew a pretty gnarely beard.

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Monthly update from Adharshila

A Traveller


Narendra Patil, going on his bike from Leh to Bangalore, dropped in. He’s an old friend from the Attha days. The children were more interested in his heavy Royal Enfeild bike rather than his talk. He stayed with us for 4 days. Most of the time we were discussing our lives in the past 18 years. We met after 18 years – or so !!! He also showed children how to juggle with three balls.

And Two Volunteers

Mahalaxmi and MBA from Symbiosis, Pune and Sameer and Electrical Engineer from the USA reached the same day. While Laxmi is a teaching enthusiast, Sameer seems to be looking for answers to deeper questions related to education and life in general. Right now they are helping in teaching English, Math, teacher training and curriculum development. Sameer is learning to cook and works on the organic farm. Laxmi is learning weaving and also works on the farm.

A Trip to an Organic Farm

Jayashree with 8 children, and Badri bhai, went to see the farm of Mr. Sharma in Maharashtra, who has recently received the President’s Award for high yield through organic farming techniques. The team came back inspired and immediately set to work on the farm. We learnt to see levels and make contours. Sharma produces about 3 tonne vegetables on an acre, in the full year – which is a lot, to say the least. We will be happy if we get a ton.

Watering the Trees

The whole Centre is busy watering the trees and vegetable plots. Remember our resolve of planting and nurturing trees to make our mess fuel self reliant.

Electricity


The fun days are over. As soon as people have started threshing and preparing their fields for the winter crop, the voltage has dropped to candlelight levels. Those who remember their school physics can appreciate the measurement of light in candles only when they have visited Adharshila in this season. We are desperately running after people to get a DP installed. We realised that inspite of thousands of hits that one gets of searching ‘alternative energy’ and Govt. depts. And NGO’s and elite institutions like IITs there is no viable alternative as yet to the State Electricity Board which relies on Dams, Nuclear Plants and the like. So what is to be done –Alternative Life style lovers ? Any body who has great ideas except saying why do you need electricity, is welcome to help.

Science
The children are busy preparing for an Astronomy Olympiad held at the district level.
One group is doing a project to find out the ill effects of the loss of bio diversity, in agriculture.

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