Thulir

2008-10-15T13:00:00.000+05:30

News Update April to August 2008

August 29, 2008

Welcome to the News update from Thulir. In this post we review happenings of the past 5 months

Bee keeping update:

The colonies in our Bee boxes are doing well. During end of August, in the 5 boxes we have in Thulir, we were able to get 2.5 litres of honey and the bee colonies seem to be healthy.

Science camp at Thulir

In August we held a weekend camp with Science experiments as the theme.
18 children took part in the Camp that started on a Saturday morning and went on till Sunday evening with the participants staying overnight.
A range of experiments were carried out:

–testing solubility, conductivity and inflammability of different materials and recording the outcomes
–making of scaled working models of pumps. This is based on the pumps made by Arvind Gupta [www.arvindguptatoys.com]. It was a great hit among the students and everybody had a lot of fun.
–various experiments to understand Bernoulli’s principles, air and water pressure, nature of sound and light etc

–observing parts of plants and flowers; transpiration in plants.

Sridhar and Sriranjani , no strangers to Thulir also visited us during the days of the Camp and participated. Sridhar, being a chemist took a class on molecular structures using models. Sriranjani taught the children new songs to sing. Sridhar who is a marathon runner and is currently training for a marathon, took the students for a run on Sunday morning and was surprised by their fitness levels. Senthil in fact went on a 16 km run the next morning and we are exploring the possibility of his participating in the Kauvery marathon along with Sridhar, Sanjeev and Santhosh, from Asha Bangalore.

Siddharth Dananjay’s visit

Siddharth a class 11 student from Indonesia visited Thulir for a week. He interacted with the students and conducted art classes.

Govindamma joins us as a Fellow.

Govindammal, Aged 17,from Moola Sittilingi village, has recently joined us. She is being trained with Rajammal and Devaki. We hope she would be able to pick up similar skills to Rajammal and Devaki so that we have backup staff next year, in case Rajammal or Devaki decides to leave [marriage/ higher studies etc.] We are also looking for more such suitable trainees and hope to take them along if we get them and have adequate funds.

New Students in Thulir

Many children of the 5 to 8 age group have started coming to Thulir this year and we have a new and boisterous bunch of them. Their attendance varies from 15 to 25 each day. Rajammal and Devaki have picked up a lot of skills in being able to engage and guide this group of students. We also have a group of 10 to 14 age group students [mostly boys] about 15 of them attending regularly. Many of them have been attending the previous years too and have suddenly become senior batch and have opened up showing a lot of self confidence.

The Class 10 exams in March

All the students who attended Thulir regularly and wrote the class x public exams in March passed. As this has happened for the 3rd consecutive year, Thulir has earned a reputation among the locals. This has been both good and bad for us. Good, as parents who thought our methods were not good as we didnt hit the children and therefore didnt expect us to succeed, have begun to change their opinions and trust our teaching abilities. Its bad as a lot of children who have never been part of Thulir sessions now come to Thulir just before the exams and want to be coached. A couple of them even came the day before the exam as they thought it would bring them good luck and help them pass! One of the parents wanted to take her daughter off the Govt School 10th class and send her to Thulir full time for coaching!

We have now made it clear to the Villagers that only those children who come regularly to Thulir and have attended at least for 2 years before they appear for their exams would be helped. We have had to do this as for most children even their basic reading/ writing skill levels are poor and so it is an uphill task to get them to a level of being able to write their 10th exams.

Going Back to school / higher studies!

There is a big wave this year among the youngsters in the villages here to continue schooling and to go out for higher studies. While this used to happen with just a few students till now every year, this year most students who passed their 10th [even the ones who finished after many supplementaries] have joined class 11 in schools outside the area, many of them joining hostels to do so. All these years most young people used to migrate outside to work [mainly in the garment industry, but this year it has been for studying.

While this looks like a good thing as young people get a few more years of student life away from grueling work, the quality of education they are pursuing is poor. They often go to Govt run schools [with hardly any teachers] or to dubious private institutions that have mushroomed all around. Once the students go outside their village for higher studies, the expenses incurred on education goes up steeply and in the village there is no understanding of what quality in education means and what are the likely benefits of higher education [save for a vague promise of Govt. jobs!].

There is aggressive promotion by private educational institutions and parents and students are being lured by promises of impossible dreams into spending large sums of money. While on the one hand we want Thulir children to acquire good academic skills and do well, on the other hand we have had to try to talk to them and their parents about the dangers of the present trends. But this has been an uphill task for us and a source for great frustration.

The Kitchen

Our temporary Kitchen facility has been serving us well these past 8 months. We have had a steady stream of visitors and volunteers. The 2 part time cooks Rajkumari and Jyothi have been managing cooking the food. As they are both locals and used to cooking only the traditional diet, we have had to train them in cooking different kinds of food for us and the outsider visitors. This has also taken much effort and Mrs Vanaja Ravindran Volunteered and taught them many new dishes. We have also incorporated many of the traditional healthy millet items to introduce it to our visitors and in an attempt at trying to preserve the tradition. This we feel is important as the food habits in the villages are rapidly changing towards unhealthy polished rice diets bereft of proteins and vitamins.

New building construction

We started the construction of a proper Kitchen, store room, guest room and dining hall in May. As we usually do, this building too is built using local materials to a large extent and local labour. This involves training local youth in building using alternative materials and methods of construction, as local skilled labour is reluctant to build in this way. We now have a steady group working on this building and learning many of the techniques. We are also planning more intensive training sessions for Annamalai, Murugan and Ezhumalai, so that their skill levels improve further. This activity has been very time consuming and we have managed by starting the work day for this activity from 6 am.

Summer break in May

Thulir was closed to students in May as were doing our annual repair work / maintenance work of the buildings. We also took a break for 2 weeks and were away meeting family. The senior students looked after the campus and the maintenance work while we were away.

Visitors in March

This year we had 2 student Volunteers from the Mahindra World College, Pune visitng us. Niwaeli and Eneli from Tanzania and Zambia spent a week at Thulir and interacted well with our students. Learning about Africa and life in tribal villages there was very very interesting. The similarities in that exists between Sittilingi and villages there was surprising. The traditional food, and housing were quite similar. Learning all this our senior students got along very well them.They loved to eat the traditional millet balls in Sittilingi as they had been missing it in Pune. Their hair was a matter of surprise and curiosity for everybody here. One day when they went with Rajamma and Devaki to the nearby village weekly market, all the shopkeepers and shoppers crowded around them with good natured curiosity and all the girls returned back with huge grins in their faces!

Vinu our visiting student from Kanavu, Wayanad went back to Kerala in the summer as his family was building a new house and needed extra hands to help. He was to return in July, but unfortunately he injured himself while practising Kalari [a Kerala martial art] and so his coming back has been postponed.

Books from Mrs Aruna Sethupathy

We received beautiful books in excellent condition from Mrs Aruna Sethupathy. She has painstakingly collected these books from various sources and sorted them to make a bundle of books appropriate for Thulir. We would like to thank Mrs. Aruna Sethupathy for this magnificent gift.

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Updates of January to March 2008

2008-03-25T11:33:00.001+05:30

Children’s Committee in Thulir

Selvaraj shifted from Thulir to help with the organic farmers’ co-operatives. Gowri left to pursue a B.Ed. course. So Thulir is now run by some of our students – Perumal (19), Senthil (19), Rajammal (17) and Devaki (17).

Senthil and Perumal teach “vocational skills” to the young children in the weekends (making bamboo toys, basic electronics, etc.). All of them are continuing their studies while learning to help us in administration and teaching.

We have been , in the last few months, talking to the four of them and the three boys who stay here in the nights about taking more responsibilities and participating in the decision-making and ownership of Thulir. Senthil's and Perumal's visit to Kanavu (where the trust is entirely managed and directed by students) and Vinu’s presence here has helped strengthen this process. An informal children’s committee has been formed. They decide their weekly schedules, clearing responsibilities, free time. activities, visitors’ teaching, schedules, etc.

Pongal Celebrations in Thulir

Pongal was celebrated in Thulir with the kolam festival [kolam is the traditional patterns drawn on the ground] organised by the senior students. The entire campus was given a thorough cleaning and decorated in a simple way. Some staff from the hospital and guests too participated. Each participant was assigned a demarcated part of the ground to draw the kolams.

The rule was that each person could use only two colours. Every available floor space around Thulir was filled with a blaze of designs and creativity. Traditionally Kolams are only done by women and hardly ever by men. But in Thulir the boys too participated with enthusiasm. In fact, Perumal's was the largest kolam. Krishna's mask and Chutty's dinosaurs also drew attention. Jayashree and sangeetha both staff at the hospital, excelled in traditional patterns.

New Year’s Day in Thulir – Children’ Committee’s organising capacity

We did not realize the potential of the Childrens’ Committee until the morning of December 30 th. Anu, who was suffering from fever, was woken up by a group of teenagers. They presented her with a computer-printed invitation (in English) to attend the New Year's Function in Thulir organized by the Thulir Childrens’ Committee. It was to be an ambitiously long program and they wanted to organize it in two day’s time. Anu was sick and Krishna had gone to attend the Asha Fellow’s Conference. The children coolly assured a flabbergasted Anu that they would handle everything. She had to only correct the spellings in the invitation and give her opinion, when asked for ,during the rehearsals.

And true to their word, they did! About two hundred people turned up – including the health auxiliaries from all the 21 villages. We were really proud to see our hitherto tongue – tied teenage boys talking on the stage, and our shy girls dancing and the smaller kids putting up plays. True, the songs and plays needed more practice and polish but we were proud to see the way the kids took charge of everything – including refreshments for the entire audience – and carried it through.

We were touched when our friends who were visiting that day - Christiane, Kai-Uwe and Susanne told us, “We couldn’t understand the language but we could feel the children’s spirit and pride for the place and that they were entirely self-motivated.”

Anu suffered a ligament injury in her back and collapsed that day. She has been immobile the last five weeks. She is progressively getting better and is expected to recover fully in the next three or four weeks.

Other news

In October, just before Gowri left, we along with the senior children visited most of the children’s houses in Moola Sittilingi, Kalayankottai, Malaithargi and Sittilingi. These social visits went on for a week and the warmth and hospitality we received made us feel good.
Of the evening children many girls aged 12 to 14 attained puberty in the last six months and their parents have stopped them from coming to Thulir in the evenings. The boy’s death in the nearby stream 1 ½ years ago and the belief in the spirit, which is thought to reside in the land of the road to Thulir contribute to this. They believe, that girls of that particular age group are most vulnerable to the ghost and hence have stopped them. We would have to visit parents once again after Anu recovers.

Work on the land/ bee-keeping update

An organic farmer form Sathyamangalam, Mr Kumar visited us and talked to the students. He commended Senthil's banana patch in Thulir and our vegetable patch, cleared our doubts and gave tips to improve. He initiated improved Rice planting method in Rajkumari's land and all of us went to observe it.
The Hospital had also organised a 2 day organic farming workshop. The senior students of Thulir participated. After that they started making organic manure and vermicompost. Each of them took small patch of land and started growing vegetables organically. but we observe a feeling of reluctance among the older students to do any work on the land or grow anything. There is a feeling that it is a low status work. We have to keep gently pushing them to do it and emphasize that farming too is a valuable education and that the knowledge that they possess is something to be valued and not forgotten. This we find is a very difficult task as mainstream values teach exactly the opposite!
We harvested our first honey this January. We got about 700 ml. We now have divided colonies and successfully housed them in five separate boxes. Our beekeeping seems to have settled down after a lot of initial difficulty. We still have a long way to go.

Our thanks to:

Dr. Ravi – a close friend who used to work in the hospital here and now works in a remote area in Orissa – got married in December. His wife Prema and he have donated the money they got as wedding gifts to Thulir. This was a very touching gesture. All of us at Thulir wish them a long life together filled with happiness, health and contentment. Both of them want to work for disadvantaged people in society. We admire their principles and wish them good luck.
Throughout this year, Prof Ravindran and Vanaja akka have been looking after Thulir whenever we had to go outside Sittilingi. This has been a great help and has provided much relief to us. Prof. has taken a number of classes for the boys on pumps, machines and electricity. His vast knowledge,and his ability to explain the basics have helped us all a lot. This year he has been teaching basic English too for the senior students.
Dr Sridhar santhanam from CMC Vellore and V.Krishnan an Architect friend from Delhi have been consistently supporting us in the building up of Thulir through the past 4 years . We are thankful for their support.
Since the formation of Thulir Trust, we are happy to have received donations from Tribal Health Initiative, Sittilingi,; Mr. Sujit Patwardhan, Pune; Dr Mary Ramaswamy from Oddanchatram; Dr. Sunder Iyer of IIT Kanpur;and Mrs. Meenakshi Balasubramanian from Chennai.

Visitors:

Dr Nick Bateson of Friends of Sittilingi, UK and Ian of Fairgrounds UK visited us. They talked to the students about fair trade and showed some products that they sell through Fairgrounds. Nick has been a regular visitor to Thulir and has conducted engaging sessions earlier too.

Susanne, a teacher of mentally challenged children, is volunteering at Thulir. It is good to have her here especially with Anu being ill. Susanne teaches English through Games and activities to the children and they enjoy it thoroughly. A good rapport has been established and she was invited to various houses during the week long Pongal celebrations.

New community Kitchen at Thulir

In December and January, the senior students built a small temporary structure to house a makeshift kitchen cum dining space. They started with a lot of enthusiasm, planned at length [thereby making it more elaborate and bigger], and built with great gusto. However, with New Year intervening and Pongal fever taking off, the work crawled to a stop and with some gentle pushing and external help, we managed to finish the project. Now we have a kitchen operational, and so are able to host visitors and guests.

Class X public exams

The Tamilnadu government class X exams for private candidates were held in September. Six of our students wrote one or two subjects each and four passed. We have a group of 11 students (including 6 girls) coming during the day to study and write X exams. All these students come to us only months before their exams and this whole exercise is a source of dilemma and frustration for us. First, none of them have been taught the basics in any of the subjects. They have been taught only to memorize facts in their school without any understanding. We believe in learning and not memorizing. So it is a frustrating exercise.

We compromise by selecting a few topics from each subject and teaching them completely.

Before the exams, they have to go to Harur (a day’s work) to pay the exam fees and again to collect the hall tickets (two days before the exams). Two whole days and about Rs 200 are spent in this travel alone. They are also allotted exam centres only in Harur or Dharmapuri. So they either have to go there the previous day and find someone to stay with or risk the bus-service on the day of the exam. During the last exams, the bus didn’t come on the morning of the English exam and the girls hitched rides and bus-hopped and reached the exam hall 45 minutes late!

When one sees the enormous hardships these students undergo just to write these exams and the poor academic skills and recognition they gain at the end of it one wonders if the whole exercise is worth it!

Other inputs for the class X dropout – students

Realizing the importance of “hand-on”skills, we taught this group basic - electronics, soap- and paper making, embroidery, organic farming, bamboo crafts etc..

We also had many discussions on the social and personal issues that confront them. Effects of the media (TV, cinema), suicides, alcoholism, infatuations and romances, real education, etc. were some of the issues we discussed with them at length. Initially most of them were silent, but with time there is an increase in their participation. Schooled into “not thinking, just receiving mode', they have just started realizing the importance of “thinking” about some of these issues.

Senthil and Perumal have been teaching this group the skills they have learnt. The girls too make good LED torches now! There is a great demand for our bamboo torches outside Sittilingi and for our plastic torches inside Sittilingi!

Rajendranath Setty, a class X student of Rishi Valley school, visited us in November and taught them to weave wrist bands of thread. These friendship bands are very popular among both boys and girls! Our village children used to buy them earlier from outside. Now they make various designs in Thulir, thanks to Raj.

Music and dance in Thulir

In our last post we had written about the visit of the Timbuktu school students. Their visit has given quite a boost to music and dance in Thulir. Prior to that, our children (and the two of us) had a great fear of singing and dancing. But inspired by them, we decided to have singing sessions every day and Kolattam dance sessions every weekend. We have also been encouraging students to enact the stories they read into small skits, which they have been doing. So now they have started organizing small performances within Thulir every month. The quality of all this still needs to improve a vast deal but all of us have great fun singing and dancing.

Learning Exchanges with “Kanavu”, Wyanad, Kerala

In September, Shirley from Kanavu visited us with two of her tribal students - Mangulu and Vinu. Mangulu and Vinu stayed here for a month learning and teaching. They taught the children songs, dances and a few Kalari payattu (traditional martial arts from Kerala) exercises. They started learning some academic and vocational skills. Their visit and the fact that five boys are now staying at Thulir regularly in the nights to study spurned us to start cooking and eating together in Thulir. All of us took turns cooking and cleaning that month. That all our teenage boys could cook a basic meal of rice and “sambhar” surprised us!

But this activity had to stop during the November/ December monsoon rain as we didn’t have a proper kitchen in Thulir. Mangulu and Vinu too returned to Kerala. But their influence in our songs and dances still lingers on.

Senthil and Perumal went to Kanavu for a week in December, to help the older children there with the harvesting of rice. Vinu has come back with them and he plans to stay at Thulir for a year. Vinu is skilled at pottery and he plans to start a pottery unit here.

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Thulir Trust formally registered

2007-10-20T21:27:00.002+05:30

Registration of Thulir Trust

Thulir Trust has been formally registered in October 2007. The three Trustees of Thulir Trust are Mr.Manoharan (Managing Trustee), Dr.Shylaja Devi and Ms.Rama Sastry.

Based on the rich experience of working with adivasis in Gudalur for more than two decades, these individuals decided to start this Trust to support educational activities among the children of disadvantaged communities like adivasis.

Detailed plan for activities has been drawn up. It is our objective to establish Education Resource Centres in remote adivasi areas, to supplement the education they receive from Government schools and to work with the children who drop out from schools.

We hope that all our friends will continue to support us during the coming years as well and will help us reach our goals.

News Update August 07

2007-08-09T15:47:00.004+05:30

Timbaktu students singing in Thulir

Its been a while since we wrote anything in this blog [the last posting was in March]. We have been meaning to write but have been caught up in the excitement of so many happenings at Thulir that we kept postponing writing "just for a few days" , till its been quite a while. Apologies to all of you who might have been wondering what has happened. So far, often it has been crises of various kinds that had been the excuse for not writing. Rest assured, that this time it has not been setbacks at work, but rather positive developments and being caught up in activities that has stopped us from writing.

Visitors to Thulir!

--Timbaktu children visit Thulir

We have just recovered after an exhausting 5 day camp at Thulir with 12 visiting students of Timbaktu school. During this stay, the Timbaktu students taught us to play the drum, dance traditional dances, sing along; make jewellery, and embroidery. They learnt Tamil words from Thulir children while teaching Telugu words to them. It was 4 intense days of cooking, cleaning, dancing, singing, bathing and swimming in the river. For most students it was their first experience of interacting closely with others of their age, speaking a different language. Intermittent rain and the soggy earth and air did little to dampen the spirit of the children.
Coming close at the heels of the earlier limited interaction with Timbaktu school [see below “senthil and Perumal's continuing journey”], this visit has helped to strengthen the collaboration between Thulir and Timbaktu and we are optimistic about sharing our resources and learnings. We have planned a trip for Thulir children to visit Timbaktu in end September.

--Sridhar and Sriranjani's visit:

As I write this, Sridhar and Sriranjani along with their daughter Janavi from Asha Princeton chapter just left after visiting us the past 3 days. Its been nice to meet them in person after all these years of email / phone contact. Asha Princeton has been supporting our fellowships the past 3 years which has been a very crucial area of support for us. The visit gave us an opportunity to communicate happenings at Thulir and also explore future activities together. One of the feedback we got from talking to them is that our blogs are read and appreciated by many of you, and that we should continue posting regularly. That explains why we have promptly sat down to write this! Of course we do know that there are friends who do read what we post and often write back to us and ideally we should be writing regularly; but then a bit of positive feedback does help us to get charged! So do write to us if you can!

Sridhar took a couple of sessions on costing [using spread sheets on the computer] of our white LED torches made with bamboo with the students. He also demonstrated some experiments using magnets with the evening session children. Sriranjani, who is a trained Montessori teacher, demonstrated use of Montessori material that we already have to Gowri, Rajamma and Devaki who teach the younger children [5-8 ages] in Thulir. Being a trained singer, she also taught songs to the students.

---Anita Balasubramanian's visit:

Anita who is no stranger to Thulir visited us for 4 days. She has been a source of constant support from the beginning and she has seen Thulir at various stages of its development. So it was good to have her again in Sittilingi. She took sessions in embroidery, electronics, and taught children to make balloon animals. She also lead a discussion on life in the USA, which lead to a lively discussion on the effects of TV watching.

Positive Developments

--Basic Technology course:

The first batch of Basic Technology course has completed the course. 2 of the boys Balu and Maadhu have gained enough confidence to go back to school to attempt class 10 exams. We feel this is an indication of their increased self confidence. Mohan is well after his heart surgery [Thanks to generous support from friends of Thulir] and he too is preparing to write his 10th exams. Senthil and Perumal have joined Thulir as Fellows on an enhanced stipend of Rs. 1000 per month. They will explore possibilities of enhancing their skills and facilitate some hands on workshop exercises for the younger children.

----Senthil and Perumals's continuing journey

Senthil and Perumal from the first batch of Basic Technology Course are continuing to be with us at Thulir to further develop their skills as well as to pass on some of the things they have learnt of to other students at Thulir. They have been part of many exciting activities these past 2 months.

**Trip to Bangalore

First in June, they travelled alone to Bangalore to get an inverter repaired. At Bangalore, a friend Ramasubramanian hosted them and arranged for an exposure to metal workshops where they watched a micro hydro turbine being fabricated. Senthil was actually offered a job in one of the workshops after he spent a day there. As a result of this interaction, they have been offered a trip to a remote Orissa village where the micro hydro plant is to be installed. They would participate in the installation of the machinery as they are skilled in plumbing and electrical wiring.

**Project at Gubbi village near Bangalore

From Bangalore, they travelled with Krishna to Gubbi, a village near Tumkur in Karnataka [a bout 100 kms away from Bangalore]. Here in a farm house that is not connected to the electrical power grid, they along with two students from Timbaktu school [Subbu and Sai], installed a solar panel based power system and did the wiring of the whole house. It was a valuable experience in working with complete strangers who speak a different language! Of course, Krishna from Thulir and Subba raju from Timbaktu were with them to help organise themselves as well as to communicate. This 2 day experience gave so much confidence and was such a morale booster that we thought we should do more such activities. From Gubbi we went to Timbaktu to spend a couple of days and look at some of their activities. This helped in further bringing Thulir and Timbaktu students together. At Timbaktu we met Ramudu who is a senior student now on a fellowship there, and also saw how he is teaching the younger children all that he has leant especially hand-skills.

**Visit to NIOT, Chennai

Immediately after the above trips, an opportunity for attending a week long training programme at the NIOT [National Institute of Ocean Technologies, Chennai] came to Senthil and Perumal. We requested that Timbaktu students too be offered this training and so Senthil, Perumal along with Ramudu and Subbu from Timbaktu attended this programme at NIOT. The training was on basics electronics of Solar panels and charge regulators along with assembling of white LED based lighting fixtures [table lamps, ceiling lamps and torches]. Timbaktu and Thulir students have been making white LED products for a while now and this programme gave an opportunity to take this activity further by better understanding of the technology as well as improving the products. A special feature of Thulir and Timbaktu work has been the use of Bamboo in these products.

Girl drop-outs join:

Six drop-out Girls have joined Thulir with the idea of writing their class 10 exams. They spend the whole day at Thulir and we are in the process of designing additional inputs apart from tuition for the exams, with the idea of boosting their confidence levels somewhat in the manner of the Basic Technology course. This is a happy occasion for us as we were aware that many adolescent girls don't come to Thulir as their movement gets restricted by their parents. We have been wondering how we could encourage more girls of the older age group to come to Thulir.

--Devaki and Rajamma join

From the above group, two of them, Devaki and Rajamma have been offered a stipend to help them to come back to Thulir. Family circumstances had forced them to go for daily wage labour. Both of them have one more subject each to complete their 10th class. They would be learning to help 5 to 8 age group children learn in Thulir in their evening sessions. We also needed additional hands now as Gowri is leaving Thulir to pursue higher studies and Selvaraj too is working 3 days a week at THI helping the organic farmers group.

Construction/ building renovation at Thulir

During the month of May we closed Thulir for the school going children. The rest of us, staff and senior students, spent the time, renovating Thulir structures. Most of Thulir buildings are built with mud walls and mud floors. After 3 years of use, the mud wall plastering and flooring had to be redone. This while being a physically exhausting work, especially given the summer heat, was very satisfying. It was also nice for the team to work together. We now have Thulir buildings as good as new!!

Earlier events:

--2 day Math Camp [ March 07]

On 24 and 25th of Feb, we held a two day math camp. 45 children came and stayed the weekend at Thulir. Sanjeev and Anita during their visit earlier that month had introduced plotting graphs. So we mostly explored graphs during these days, using the temperature measurements that we record in Thulir using a max min thermometer. We also had a session of solving folk math puzzles. Mehboob Subhan who was visiting us then, helped with sessions on introducing Sudoku puzzles. Apart from math, the children were keen to put up short skits [plays]. Seven groups put up plays with limited preparation time. It was an engaging and enjoyable 2 hour programme, and came as an eye opener to us!

--Annual day/ Therukkoothu performance [April 07]:

The children were keen to celebrate April 14th – Thulir's birth date. They decided to have a cultural programme. They planned, created, practised and put up the performance themselves. The audience was only other students. The performance went off so well we decided to repeat it for the parents and other villagers. The cultural programme took place on the Thulir playground on April 21st.

We also decided to invite the Sittilingi traditional street play ["therukkoothu"] group to put up a performance in the Thulir grounds. Therukkoothu , a vibrant folk theatre form has been in existence in the valley and has been popular too. Of late it has been slowly dying out with TV and DVD player taking over. A group of Sittilingi youth have been encouraged to learn the traditional art by Thulir. It helps that Selvaraj, Thulir staff, has been a keen learner, and that a teacher of this art had also moved to Sittilingi village a couple of years back. After almost a year of training, the young troupe has been successfully performing at events in Sittilingi.

So on the night of 26th April, the therukkoothu was performed at Thulir grounds. It was a Mahabaharatha story of “Jarasandran”, and the performance started at 10 pm and went on till 6 am!!

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2007-03-12T08:22:00.000+05:30

Thulir : Some reflections

Its almost April and it is anniversary time. As usual, it is time for reflection. Of course we just put up a news update that talked in detail about the activities at Thulir, so this note is more to summarise it and add how we see ourselves currently and where we are headed to.

Well, as things stand now, these are the various groups and set of activities currently taking place at Thulir:

Evening Sessions are being attended by about 55 children [even as we write this the past two weeks have seen fresh children coming in. But on an average we have about 25 to 30 children attending. We have now arranged them into 3 groups [age and ability wise]. We have introduced more ordered exercises after feed back from the students. Apart from this we have the usual activities of basic language, Math , General knowledge, art and crafts and General topics, viewing documentaries and feature films.We have recently started computer classes .We are also seriously thinking of starting a sort of film club with regular screenings followed by discussions as we realize that a lot of their current thinking is deeply influenced by mainstream Tamil movies and therefore it is important to make them aware of this impact and to show alternatives. Apart form this activity, we are currently working on how we could organize the academic learning part more effectively. This is a big challenge and source of many of our frustrations currently, as the students are not very regular and come for a short period of time everyday.

The Basic Technology course students are continuing to do their mix of academics with technology skills. Some of their sessions are invoking interest from the other students and we are considering doing some of the skills activities with the evening session students too. We are truly amazed at the positive benefits working with the hands has on their self confidence levels and there is a subsequent drastic improvement in academic skills. Ideally this should be available to all students and this might become the biggest challenge in the coming years for us. In a small way we have started this process for the evening class students and hope to work forward slowly. Perumal, Senthil and Balu [along with Mohan who should be joining us back after he recovers from Surgery] being our first batch, need more time than the one year that would end by June. We feel they need a bit more of "hand holding" time, before they are ready to move on to either taking up a job or going for higher level skill training. So we are postponing taking in a new batch to the end of this year.

Sreyarth and Bharathi continue with their "home" learning using Thulir resources. Twice a week, Ragini who is 6 years old and whose parents work at our hospital , also joins them. This group in the coming years may grow, as we have other parents in the hospital whose children are in the 0-5 age group.

The exam batch : A group of 5 students are currently preparing for their 10th boards, They are here full time and apart from organizing their preparation we have introduced some general discussions classes for them. Some of these students could continue to come to Thulir even after the exams and we are looking closely now at what sort of a programme might benefit them.

It is obvious we dont have a conventional structure [say like that of a school with classes], and things look a bit too varied/ unorganised/ hap hazard. In fact part of our frustration is not being able to look at it with some sense of order, and especially in not being able to communicate this. It certainly seems we dont have a "target group" or "focus".

It is however getting clearer that what we are, is a Learning Resource Centre that is open to a wide age group. The way this is working out now is that Individuals are either ,at the one end, getting motivated to learn and/or on the other , actually learning skills [both academic and vocational]. We wonder if it could be in some sense like students going to a University [in US?] and choosing her/ his credits and pace of completing the credits. For this to happen properly two factors are crucial :

1]. the ability of students to decide what they want to learn and when; and
2] that we are available with time/ energy and the right resources for them to be able to do this. In a sense this is what we are doing and with this clarity we may be able to a] evaluate ourselves better and b] perform better in future.

One of the important learnings from the Basic Technology Course is also that in a group, not everyone is ready to undergo a shared experience of learning and the specifics of what is taught/ to be learnt may not suit some individuals [which explains our drop outs from the course]. It would of course be ideal to open up the place for "any day admission". [In a sense we are that right now, except for the Basic Technology Course where we had a formal date of starting]. It is not too radical a thought as the National Open School now offers the possibility to write exams on demand [one can walk into any of its Centres on any working day, pay the fees and take an exam!!].

Some questions that arise are:

Can we leave things to individual students to come up and say " this is what I want to learn now"?

Yes, we can. this is beacuse for one, most students come to Thulir on their own: they are not compelled by parents to come. Secondly, after 3 years, we now have a core group of students who are motivated and therefore have created an atmosphere where by newer students get motivated much sooner.

So once we accept this what about organizing learning for so many different students at different times/ different paces.? How is this to be done?

This has been our big challenge so far and it hasnt been easy. But given our peculiar situation of an institution where students do not come regularly, there is no other way to do it. It doesnot mean that we cant have classes for a group. Where it is appropriate, this does happen. Given our scarcity of teachers, we need to encourage students themselves to teach each other. This will lead to higher confidence levels as explaining a concept to another person really clarifies ones own understanding.

How do we evaluate our performance / students performance?

The probable way to do this is to have individual portfolios where all the work of the children and occasional tests that they voluntarily take are all filed. Along with the dates and their attendence records this would make it possible to have a fairly clear idea of how a particular student has progressed. These records would also give a pointer towards our efforts in organizing materials as well as teaching sessions that were involved with each individual. Apart from this, we could also include our notes on sessions we take for the children and notes on activities that happen here. This does seem a lot of work, but some of it we already are doing and so it requires the additional effort of streamlining this process.

Of course conventional pointers are always available...such as number of children passing 10th Std exams and so on.We also intend exploring other alternatives to the private candidate in the state exam mode that is currently being used. These could be various possibilities under the National Institute Open Schooling exams with certificate exams in various vocational streams, apart from the 10th equivalent academic/vocational 10th exams.

We would be very happy to hear from you what you all think and any suggestions/ comments would be very valuable. We look forward to hearing from you all.

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2007-03-12T08:19:00.000+05:30

A Test for Thulir

The review we did of Thulir with the students was called "Thulirukku oru paritchai" [a test for Thulir]. There were many questions each person had to answer. The following questions were some of the questions asked:

How long have you been coming here?
List the things you have learnt here.
What else do you want to learn?
What do you like most here? what do you not like?
Shall we have sessions only on weekends and holidays instead of having sessions every evening on weekdays?
What other rules should we have in Thulir?
Should we be more strict generally and about attendence ?
Is the supplemantary snack we have in the evenings necessary or shall we stop it?
Should we have written excercises every day?
Is the way of teaching here OK or should it be changed?
Do you know why some girls have stopped coming to Thulir?

It was heartening to see all the children sit down and write answers to these questions. Most of them when they first came to Thulir could hardly write [even Tamil]. Of course they still make a lot of mistakes, but have progressed to the stage of confidently attempting to think and write on their own!

Among the things they have listed as having learnt are

Tamil and English [to read and to write],
Math,
General knowledge,
Talking to new people with confidence,
and learninig about the outside world from them,
reading books,
drawing, painting, crafts like knitting etc,

All of them have said they like it here. 4-5 of them have said specifically that they are happy here and that they have been able to learn here only because there is an affectionate environment around. Some girls [we know they have a traumatic family situation] have said that they are able to forget their troubles here.

Most children want sessions every evening and during weekends also! 4 children have said that they dont like the fact that we dont have evening sessions on Mondays [right now we keep Mondays for admin work, maintenance of the campus and buildings, and for planning and preparing classes]. Some older children expressed that they are expected to work in their family fields on school holidays and therefore not to have sessions on holidays.

Two boys have said we should hit children when they do wrong! [we asked this question as this is something we discuss often with the children and also right now a controversy is raging in Tamil Nadu as the Govt has removed the right of the teacher to hit...yes, it was sanctioned in law!]

Everyone has said they would attend Thulir even if we stop the food supplement.

Most want more spoken English classes and computer classes. Two older children [boy and girl] want sewing lessons.

Most have said that the teaching methods and teaching environment in general need not be changed.

All children want to do some written work every day.

Two children have expressed that the play time has been reduced nowadays and that it should not be done.

Most said that children should be asked to come more regularly but if they have work in their fields then they should be excused.

The older children have said that the reason for some girls stopping was the attainment of puberty and the death of a boy in the stream.

We hope to keep this dialogue going and take on some of their suggestions.Already some measures have been put in place, for instance, writing exercises every day. We are happy that we did this exercise with the students as we have a better understanding of the way they perceive Thulir's activities. It has helped us clarify in our minds too what we ought to be doing in future.

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2007-03-12T08:14:00.000+05:30

Thank you all for writing in.....

Our last news update in this Blog has elicited such an overwhelming response.

We now know that so many of you read our Blog [even such a long and possibly rambling one as our previous blog !]. But we have been moved that so many of you have shown concern that we wrote about feeling low. We have been moved by your expression of concern; and by your sharing of similar experiences [ we now know from you that these things happen and one can overcome with perseverance!].

Thanks to your writing in we dont feel anymore that we are in some remote place facing challenges alone..... we are truly fortunate to have so many friends who care and are willing to express support. Thank you all so much.

We are also happy to say that we are feeling a lot more positive and optimistic. The Thulir children have played a major part by their positive feedbacks and by being responsive to our efforts of late.

We have had a hard look at Thulir and what we have been doing and have posted the thoughts as " Thulir -- some reflections". [One more post for you all to read :)].

Thank you all once again for all the support.

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2007-02-26T19:49:00.000+05:30

Its been a long gap since our last post. The reasons for this are many fold. Our internet connectivity has taken a nosedive in terms of quality and we are unable now to send anything more than simple text messages, if at all we are able to connect. The Basic Technology course has taken a lot more of our time and energy than we had imagined. This combined with the preparations for the 10th class exams and our regular Resource Centre activities took a toll on our energy levels and we started feeling frustrated. The low morale led to less communication with the outside world!

The course has been going through many exciting times as well as some frustrations. Two of the students left for Thiruppur to take jobs. One of these two students had to leave due to family problems which made it impossible for him to continue living in Sittilingi. The other left suddenly without giving us reasons and so we are not very sure of why he left. A third student has stopped as he has to undergo a major heart surgery, and is quite unwell right now. A fourth is also on sick leave as he has been frequently falling sick. These students' difficulties while they were on the roll had a negative effect on the group as a whole.

One of our staff, Anbu , left in November. He was commuting from a village 6 kms away and found it difficult to continue. Over the last one and half years , with Ravi's help we had slowly trained him to handle accounts and other Admin work and he had just started doing a good job when we lost him. Our workload increased. All this resulted in our feeling frustrated and affected the general morale in Thulir. It has taken a series of efforts, from taking a break and trekking in the Himalayas with the family [something we have been planning for years], to taking the Thulir children in various groups on study tours , to bring back our optimism.

We are currently reviewing Thulir activities to chart the course for the coming year. It started as a review with just the two of us as we were not very happy with the way things were, wondering if we ought to be making changes. We were looking for more tangible and faster results. We had more questions than we had answers; we were looking at all the aspects that were unsatisfactory and could be improved. But this soon lead to a feeling of frustration and a bit of pessimism. Luckily, we were able to interact with friends who are seniors [and with many decades of experience] in the field of alternative education and this helped us hugely.

We were able to look at things in a more objective and positive manner. Subsequently we talked to the children, putting forward questions that we had in our minds and asked them to reflect with us and give us a detailed feedback. This was something that had been in the back of our minds but had not been initiated. We called it a " Test for Thulir ". It was gratifying to see the children take the whole process very seriously and put in a lot of effort for a couple of days . Even the children who couldn't write well wrote whatever they could. Right now we are in the middle of this process and will report on it in detail soon. But what has come forward till now has been very very useful and positive and makes us feel hopeful about Thulir's future.

Update on the Basic Technology Course:
The dropping out of two boys and the illness of two others caused some lowering of the morale of the remaining boys. But they have steadily been learning and doing various things..

Meanwhile, Mohan's health has deteriorated . He has to have a double valve replacement heart surgery immediately. With the financial help of a friend of Thulir, he is getting operated in C.M.C, Vellore on March 7th.

Bamboo work
The boys had learned to make chairs out of Bamboo earlier at Timbaktu and based on that experience made similar chairs at thulir too. There is some local demand for their chairs â€“ the forest council leader and the postman want these chairs.

Excursions

We made a few excursions to cheer the group and provide them exposure. First we went exploring some of the villages on the nearby Chinnakalrayan hills during a day trip. This was a welcome break for us from routine and helped pull ourselves up a bit.

Later we went to Bangalore for a three day trip. The objective was to fix our old computers that were not functioning properly. We opened them up to learn about some basics of the hardware before going to Bangalore. There friends of ours helped to fix some of the troubles and helped us to go shopping for some spares. This has now lead to Mahaboob Subhan visiting to spend a month teaching basics of Computers to our students. Mahaboob Subhan, 22 years old, studied at the Learning Centre run at Timbaktu in Andhra and is learning computer hardware and software.

We also visited a house in Bangalore that has been built using alternative technology and is experimenting with alternative sources of energy. It was an interesting visit and we could get exposure to many different technologies in one place.

Follow up workshop on bee keeping
We had been having a bad spell with our bee colonies too and so we invited Justin and Rajendran from Keystone , Kothagiri to conduct a follow up workshop and help us with some of our practical difficulties. Analyzing our efforts and finding out where we were wrong and interacting with them helped raise our spirits . We now have three colonies in and around Thulir.

Resource Centre activities
Our regular evening activities have continued. Our regular children came even during the monsoons undaunted by the incessant rains ,our bad road and the stream across the road. A number of girls had stopped coming after the death of Murugan in the stream in summer. We went and talked to the parents and began escorting the girls back to the village after classes. Now some of the girls are coming back. The children still go back by 6.30 pm.[before it gets dark]. We have continued our sessions of learning basic languages, math and general awareness through various methodologies. Our first group of children show some improvement in all these aspects and in their confidence levels. Sometimes we ask them to teach the other kids.

The head mistress of the local Govt. school and some of the teachers have been visiting Thulir and looking at our materials. The headmistress asked us to help take some classes for the older children in the school. We agreed and everything was fixed when some of the male teachers went up in arms against the headmistress and the whole thing fell through.

We had a plastic awareness campaign . In connection with this, children have been making news paper covers and we supplied some to the local shops. The THI Staff had earlier talked to the shop owners about the need to reduce use of plastic. Together with the hospital team and the children, we cleaned all the village streets one day. Plastic disposal still remains a problem.

Senthil, Mohan and Arul were coached for their class 10 English exam and they passed. Somehow a reputation has formed and now we have 5 new students coming to Thulir to prepare for their class 10 exam. But they have come 2 months before the exams and we don't see ourselves being able to do much for them.

Most of them don't have a conducive environment at home to study [with the T.V. on and drunk parents/ neighbours, apart from other distractions]. So just providing the physical space to study would be a help

Thulir children go on an excursion

We decided to visit Sathanur Dam, Thiruvannamalai and Gingee on a day's trip with 40 children. This had a been a long standing demand from the children that they be taken somewhere on an excursion. So finally we did it end Dec on a weekend. This was also the peak pilgrimage season. On the one hand we would have preferred a quieter day but on the other hand it was also an opportunity for our children to be exposed to crowds [being from a small village, it is certainly a novelty!; though we were nervous about losing one or two of them in the crowds!]

From days before there was a lot of excitement among the children. Some 15 children who live far from the village, came the previous evening to spend the night at Thulir [we had planned on a 4 am departure]. Selvaraj went the previous evening itself to Harur [2 hours away] to meet the bus and bring it so that it could reach at 4 am at Sittilingi. We cooked food together the previous night and carried it.

Amazingly, 15 children woke up, heated bath water, had their baths using the 1 bathroom we have and were ready long before 4am ! Our children were terribly excited but very well behaved throughout.

On our way out we found a small archaeological site which was a stepped pond decorated with panels in stone depicting scenes from the ramayana. At Sathanur, we had a picnic breakfast and walked around the garden and the dam itself. At Thiruvannamalai, we visited the main temple, which was really crowded with pilgrims. We explained a bit of the history of the temple and the many mythical stories attached to it.

We moved on to Gingee which has a fort with many rocky hills with palaces on top. The highest hill is about 800 meters high and we were warned not to climb it as we may not be able to get back in time before the fort gates close for the day at 5 pm. We were told we would need at least an hour to 90 mts to climb it. The children were very keen and we decided they could go as high as possible in 30 mts and return in time for the closure. They being fit for outdoor activities climbed up in 20 mts flat!! There's lots to see at Gingee and we need to go there again someday with lots of time.

Pongal at Sittilingi
Pongal was celebrated with great fanfare this year. We were invited for the poojas and lunches in people's farms and homes and the bull races in the temple .We are getting more accepted in the village and being involved in their pongal celebrations feels good . Vediyappan and his youth friends oragnised competitive events that had sports [traditional such us kabaddi, tug of war etc.]and song and dance competitions.

A youth group, including Selvaraj, learning traditional therukoothu [street play], put up an all night performance that was well attended in spite of the cold weather.

At Thulir we celebrated by filling all possible floor spaces with colored kolams. It was a non competitive event that had very enthusiastic participation by all age groups and both the sexes.

Visitors

As we write this Blog, Sanjeev and Anita from Asha Austin are visiting us. They have been here for a week and have sessions introducing puzzles to the children. They have also introduced basic Electronic circuits to the Basic Technologies course students. Right now they are building circuits to make white LED products that would be useful at Thulir. Visit their blog Sanjeev and Anita, for more details.

Dr Abraham, a dentist visited Thulir and conducted classes on dental care. He made nice charts with detailed drawings explaining the anatomy and details on dental care. The children went on asking a lot of questions, though we had warned Abraham they might not take to theory!

Prachi Aggarwal, an architecture student taught the children embroidery. Mrs Mythili Santhanam who visited again this winter too continued her embroidery sessions.

Rajamma Ravi, from Sittilingi, has been teaching knitting to the children a number of socks and woolen caps have been knitted.

Rachel a student volunteer had visited us and during her sessions she taught some songs and games.

Anisha, a medical student came to spend a month at the hospital. She took classes for Shreyarth on the human body. This was very useful as of late we had been a little preoccupied and Sreyarth was missing some serious learning sessions.

Esther came again this year and held several sessions with the children. she brought dried fruits, pictures, currencies and stamp from Europe and talked about them.

Dr Nick, who had come the previous winter too, returned this January. He has been teaching the children English conversation.

We thank all the visitors for spending time with the children of Thulir. We really believe that it is important for children to gain confidence and get exposure by interacting with outsiders, and visitors by interacting with children really enrich their learning. In fact, during our "test for Thulir", some of the children have menioned "talking to strangers" being able to talk to foreigners" as an important skill they have learned!

2006-09-27T15:12:00.000+05:30

Greetings from Sittilingi. Its been a while since the last post and hope this update will help fill the gap in communication. We have had the usual problems with crashing computers, and dead phone lines [the Thulir phone is dead as write this, and we are hoping to somehow access the net from elsewhere to post this!]. The connection is very poor in Sittilingi so this update might just be largely text without photographs.

Update on Basic Technology Course:

The course has so far been a roller coaster ride with moments of exhilaration and of depression and despair. Its been constantly on our minds to put down detailed notes and share it with you all through the Blog. But one of the major outcome of starting the course has been a lack of time and energy to sit down and write.

We started the course with the idea that one of us can take charge of the course full time and leave the other person to look after the continuing programmes at Thulir [the other morning and evening classes]. We had to quickly give this up as it became too exhausting for a single person to be with the students for the full day and take all the classes [not to mention the quick boredom amongst the students in having to sit with a single teacher for the whole day!]. Now the two of us are involved together splitting the classes between us.

The interesting challenge so far has been trying to balance classroom theory sessions with practical classes. there have been times when we have had more of theory, and the students had lost patience and interest and showed restlessness. At times such as these we try to quickly move on to practical sessions, though this is often not easy. The reason being that practical work needs careful planning and ensuring that the right type of tools in adequate quantities along with the raw materials are available. This is proving to be difficult as we have yet to establish our workshops and equip them properly and out of campus work such as electrical wiring/ plumbing needs real life work available when we need it.

Well, coming down to the specifics of what the course has been going through so far, you may remember that we had talked about the beekeeping workshop in our last post. Here's continuing from there...

The Beekeeping training at Vazhathottam was very useful. The boys learnt many useful tips on how to capture bee colonies from the wild and also various aspects of maintenance of the bee boxes.

As mentioned earlier in our previous Blog post, the workshop conducted at Thulir on beekeeping by Justin Raj and Rajendran of Keystone, generated such a lot of enthusiasm that we decided to take it further. So Senthil, Jayaram, Perumal, Balu and Selvaraj along with Anu and Sreyarth went to Keystone's Field Station at Vazhaithottam, Nilgiris.

Excerpts from Anu's notes on this trip:

"It was a truly great experience. Vazhathottam is located in the Sigur plateau next to the Mudumalai wildlife sanctuary and staying in such a place was a bonus. We went for walks into the forest nearby and spotted Malabar squirrels, wild dogs, deer etc.

Justin Raj was an excellent teacher and the boys had more than enough opportunities to work on many bee boxes each at a different stages of development and honey production, presenting one with its own unique problem. We were particularly happy that Sreyarth [our 9 yr old son] was completely involved in the training, took notes diligently, kept a record of the days happenings every night, and handled bees with ease and with interest. He asked us for a Bee box as a birthday gift. Seeing his enthusiasm, Drs. Nandakumar and Shyla at Gudalur, gave him one of their empty bee boxes. We were also very impressed by the dignity and confidence of the tribal boys while handling the bees. They are absolutely quiet and full of concentration . They do not flinch or move even an eyelid when they get stung. And to think that none of the boys had had any previous experience with the bees!"

Once they came back, there was much enthusiasm and almost every day they would be off early morning or later in the afternoons to hunt for colonies to capture. Of course , some of the boys got stung . The bees seem to especially like the area around the eyes. Soon we had most of them moving around with swollen eyes and temporarily half blind. Balu, while walking early morning to his family farm spied a bee colony in transit[with his one working eye of course!]. Bees in transit are ideal for capture, as they have voluntarily left their hive to setup a new hive. Balu was not prepared as he didn't have an empty box or a netted bag which is normally used and had no one to help. Not one to be easily discouraged, Balu found a one foot long piece of bamboo lying by the road side, picked up a piece of waste plastic carry bag, to use as a stopper for the bamboo, neatly gathered the bees and put them into the hollow of the bamboo. Having thus captured the colony, he promptly was at our doorstep at 7 am on a Sunday morning! Very soon we had 7 boxes with new bee colonies. Every body was on a high and every morning we had bees and boys buzzing all around us . The boys kept inspecting the boxes, making sure that no ants were getting to the boxes and that bees were staying put. This went on for a couple of weeks. Then slowly disaster struck. One by one the bee boxes got attacked by worms that feed on the wax and so the bees started dying and the colonies started disappearing. Soon one morning all the boxes were empty leaving us depressed.

It took us a couple of weeks before we could pull ourselves and start afresh. We did a postmortem and realized some of the mistakes we did. In our over enthusiasm, we disturbed the boxes too much and this could have driven some of the colonies away. We have started the process again. At the time of writing there are two colonies, while a third disappeared just yesterday.

Construction work at Thulir Extn:

The Construction of the new wing at Thulir [which we had briefly mentioned in our post of July 28^th] is over. The mud and thatch workshed and storeroom has been finished and we have started using them. The lack of space, the constant construction activities and the heaps of mud and stone and dust amidst all our varied activities and increased number of people were getting on all our nerves . We heaved a sigh of relief when we had the extra space. We inaugurated it with all the younger kids making patterns with flowers all over the floor [Poo-kolams ] on Onam day. A big thanks to V.Krishnan and Santhanam Sridhar for financing the workshed.

So the Basic Technology course students have a classroom/ workspace as well as a new equipment/ tools store. The construction gave an opportunity to learn basic some building skills. The students got to help in doing the thatch roof as well as in making walls of Rammed earth. The theory classes conducted alongside introduced them to measurements, basic drawing of plans, concepts of scaled drawings etc.

The next step was to do a small construction project by themselves [without masons!]. We had plans to do a small extension to our house nearby and so this was a good opportunity for them to take on a building project. As a first step the students learnt to make stabilized mud blocks using a simple hand operated machine. The next step was to learn to mark out a building on site, and learn to do foundation work. The work started with ambitious 6 hour long work sessions, and soon every one was too tired [including us as we haven't been doing construction work at site for a while now!] and exhausted to pay any attention in the theory classes that dwelt on estimation and working out costs for billing their work.

So we settled down to a routine where they work 2 to 3 hours every day. Once they started to do the wall masonry the excitement mounted and the fascination in learning to build a wall to plumb took over. As I write this [sept 21^st], we have just finished building a masonry arch today and are all feeling very good! There’s something almost magical when the form work that supports the arch is removed and the arch stands by itself defying gravity. [We just had a ceremonious removing of the form work that was greeted with a round of applause by the evening students who came to Thulir!].

With this achievement the students are feeling so good today, that they want to also try their hands at doing the bamboo and thatch roofing by themselves without a carpenter.

Maintenance of electrical and plumbing work:

Our students have become so confident now of their wiring and plumbing skills that they take up any maintenance work in our campus with keen interest and are able to complete it without constant supervision. They were able to locate a shorted underground cable, and fix it! This we thought would be a tricky job and had planned to arrange for an electrician to come after the boys give it a shot.

Billing of work:

One of the most important work that the students have to do routinely is recording details of materials used, their costs and also amount of time spent/ and quantity of work done. We feel that this is the most important aspect they need to learn to be able to become entrepreneurs. Also we need to quantify all the work that is done by the students and properly cost it so that the course too is clear about costs involved in training as well as income generated through learning by doing. Already, having heard of the kind of work the students are learning, the villagers have started getting small jobs done by us. Recently, we were asked to come and do a costing for a construction work done in the village to settle a dispute regarding contract payment. Our students went to measure the building and we helped them to work out the quantities. There have been requests to fix electronic gadgets such as radios and TVs, but currently we don't have the expertise and so are unable to take on these jobs.

Drop in number of Girl children visiting Thulir:

In April this year we had a tragedy. Nearby Thulir there is a stream with beautiful rock formations with a large pool t its bottom. This is a favourite place for children to go swimming and diving during hot summer afternoons. One afternoon when the Thulir boys were at The stream, a neighbour who had just finished his school final exams, and had come back home from his hostel, took a hurried dive into the shallow end of the pool and smashed his skull on a rock under water. Our boys had to pull out the body from underwater and we were all helpless as death had been instantaneous. This was a traumatic event and it took several weeks for the boys to shake themselves off it and resume normal visits to Thulir. This particular spot and the land adjacent to it was always believed to be haunted and this event reinforced this. The tragedy too was attributed to the spirit. But as children have to pass this land to come to Thulir,for a while, attendance at Thulir dropped drastically but picked up again. But the girl children have not come back in the numbers they used to before this tragedy. Coupled with this some of the senior girls came of age and the event has provided a convenient excuse for the parents not to send them. We have talked to some of the parents, and offered to escort their children back to the village in the evening [a distance of 600 meters], and so a few of them have started coming back. Visiting these homes in the Village was a very encouraging experience. We were welcomed very warmly and parents were generally appreciative of Thulir’s work. After being in Sittilingi for 3 years, now we are better accepted and are greeted warmly when we pass the village. We feel a lot more comfortable now and feel that we have some measure of acceptability among the villagers which we expected to happen [if at all] after a much longer time. THI’s work and the goodwill they have earned among the community , is an important factor in this happening so fast. We also hope that this is a sign of some degree of acceptance of our ideas among the community.

This year we have also had several requests from students appearing for class 10 exams that they would like to prepare for their exams by coming to Thulir full time. Right now we have three such students and two of our Basic Technology course students are also appearing for class 10 exams in some subjects [Mohan is writing English and maths and Senthil is appearing for the English exam.].This also takes a considerable time and effort from our side. Sometimes it is really frustrating as the students have not been taught any of the basics .

A new trainee has joined us:

Gowri from Sittilingi, aged 21 has joined Thulir as a trainee. She has studied B.A.

Tamil/Math month at Thulir:

This year we thought we would organize the evening sessions a bit more and so decided to focus on a single subject every month. So the activities [whether they are games or puzzles or reading writing exercises are all pertaining to the subject of the month. We have had focus on Tamil and are currently onto Math.

Visitors to Thulir:

Varuni: A graduate student from New York, Varuni taught the children craft work with wastepaper.

Tarsh Thekaekara came from Bangalore and fixed problems with the Thulir Computers. Thulir computers decided to crash one after the other and suddenly we were left with none of them working. Thanks to Tarsh we now have one working PC and so are able to send and receive mail [when the phone lines work!], and are able to do some of the routine writing and accounts work. He took a class on electronics for the students, teaching them basic soldering skills.

Harsha and Tariq visited us from Bangalore. Besides doing sessions in Art with Thulir Children, they also gave a boost to the volley ball game played in the evenings.

All the above mentioned persons are children of friends and colleagues of ours and we have seen them grow up as children. Now they are all confident young adults involved in learning different vocations. Having them visit us was such a pleasure. They deeply empathise with Thulir children and were ready to interact with them and conduct sessions for them. We also realised how much they have thought about issues relating to learning and education.

Shri. Balasubramanian and Shrimathi Meenakshi from Chennai spent a few days with us .Shrimathi. Meenakshi conducted interesting sessions for the younger children . Her Tamil classes for our son Sreyarth were especially helpful as on most days we tend to neglect his needs while we cater to the various demands being made on us. She also helped the hospital with a lot of Tamil – English translations.

Maggie and Caroline, medical interns visiting THI hospital are with us for 2 months and have been interacting with the Thulir children every week. They joined us on a hike with the children to the nearby forest. Their sessions give an opportunity for our children to learn English.

Mr Suresh Nair and Mr S.Bhashyam from Bangalore visited us last month. They were appreciative of our work and made a generous financial contribution.

We would like to thank all the above mentioned people and look forward to their visits to Sittilingi and support in the future. We also take this opportunity to thank all of you who have been good friends of Thulir, and shown your appreciation through words of encouragement, visiting us and conducting sessions with Thulir students and through financial contributions. We have been very fortunate in having a large group of very supportive individuals without whom our efforts at Thulir would be impossible. We look forward to continuing this relationship and hope to see more of you visit us.

2006-07-28T11:29:00.000+05:30

Construction at Thulir

We are adding a new wing which will have a class room cum workshop for the
Basic Technology course, and a store room for the tools and materials that
would be used by them. The wing will also have an entrance lobby, where
additional classes can be held. The wing has been designed in such a way that
we now have a court in the middle that can be used for large gatherings [100
persons] and performances.

This has also provided an opportunity for our students to learn some
construction skills and some of the days in the past couple of weeks has been
spent working at site and in theory classes on basics of construction
materials and their properties.

2006-07-28T11:25:00.000+05:30

Bee Keeping Workshop

On 11th and 12th July we held a 2 day workshop on Bee Keeping. Justin and
Rajendran, Staff from Keystone, an NGO specialising in beekeeping and honey
gathering activity in the Nilgiris, were the resourse persons. Apart from our
course students, 4 farmers from the villages around also participated. The
workshop generated a lot of enthusiasm amongst our students and we also
realised that given a rich forest area around us, there is a lot of scope for
serious Bee keeping and honey processing activity.

As a followup 4 of the students from the batch along with Anu and Sreyarth are
currently visiting Keystone's field Centre at Vazhathottam in the Nilgiris to
learn more practical skills in bee keeping.

More of their visit in the next post after they come back!

2006-07-28T11:17:00.000+05:30

The First batch of Basic Technology course has joined Thulir!

June was a hectic month in Thulir. There was a phase of touring the nearby
villages and explaining what this new course on Basic Technologies is all
about and seeking applications from suitable candidates. Then we had the
applications coming in, in all 13 of them. We decided to keep size of the
first batch between 6 and 8 students, given our constraints of space,
materials and staff!!

After a day full of interviews and tests, we selected 7 students for the first
batch. Given the fact that most of them are already in the earning age group
[most boys at 14, who drop out of school, end up migrating to the city in
search of jobs], we decided to offer them a stipend of Rs. 500 a month to
take care of their personal expenses.

The course took off to a flying start as we had some major electrical wiring
and plumbing work on the third day of the course itself. A good electrician
had come from Chennai to do this work and so our students got a good
opportunity to learn the basics of electrical work.

This was followed by small electrical work at Thulir, at the hospital and at
staff homes. So the students got practise what they had learnt in real life
situations. They were also taught to take measurements, to keep track of
materials used, record these properly and to make bills! The course in its
second week has stated earning money!

2006-06-07T17:51:00.000+05:30

Looking Back -- Three Years of Thulir

April 2004 to April 2006

It is 2 years since Thulir was inaugurated on April 14th 2004. Its time to take stock and look back at the past 2 years happenings and also to see where we are going.

Many of you have been keeping track of progress here through our website and the newsfromthulir blog. So we thought instead of listing much of it again, we would try to highlight some of the important aspects through a question and answer mode.

***** What is Thulir ?

Thulir is a physical space. This place exists for creating an environment conducive for learning. It is a place where ultimately adults and children should be able to explore together whatever areas of learning interests them. Ideally, the community itself, and the environment around the community should be the place where all learning happens. But the situation as it exists today is far from this ideal. Therefore the need to create a conducive space.

***** Who uses Thulir ?

Thulir started off with school going children using the place in the evenings. Along with them, 3 staff children, who don't go to school started using the place in the mornings. This small group grew as, 4 school dropout children joined later. For the past year 3 trainees [all around 25 yrs of age] have also joined the group. Of course, for the 2 of us too this has been, and continues to be a great place for learning!!

The attendance figures show that more than 200 children have used Thulir the in the past 2 years. Of this about 25 children have been more regular with attendance of more than 100 days, with the others using for shorter periods.

***** Why is attendance not compulsory?

We find that a common reason for absence is that children are required to help at the farms when there is extra work during particular seasons [harvest, weeding, etc.] We feel such work is an important part of education, and we need to be accommodative. We want children to develop a love for learning and voluntarily come to Thulir. Coercion through insistence on attendance might be counter productive. However, we do recognize that there would be instances where attendance might have to be regulated, for example where a group of children take up learning an organized course.

****** How does Learning happen in Thulir?

There are many ways in which learning happens:

through class room teaching: These are conventional situations with the teacher the taught and the blackboard. This is very useful for teaching language and to some extent Math skills;

through sharing sessions: There is a person in focus around whom a group gathers, and stories are read out, newspaper articles explained, audio-visual material shown and explained, science experiments demonstrated etc. The atmosphere is more informal and often there are questions raised or comments offered by the students;

guided activities: these often happen in small groups of 3 to 6 students and they usually have a task or learning materials to explore. From time to time they are helped by others. These include art and crafts, using play materials that help to understand concepts in math and language;

self-study: individuals/ small groups use books and materials available to study by themselves.

through camps/ workshops: camps and workshops are held where sessions that focus on a particular activity are held. Workshops are conducted with resource persons who have special skills [for e.g. in theatre/ art / music etc.]

****** Is this kind of learning effective? How much have the children learnt in the past 2 years?

Yes. It is! We find that the children who have been regulars at Thulir have improved in many aspects.

They were very wary of taking books and browse by themselves. Now they take books by themselves and read/browse.

Their language skills are improving [from a situation where they could not even form sentences in Tamil properly, to the level where they have confidence to write small stories and illustrate them. Of course, they do make mistakes even now but it is so much less now.

Most children could not do basic math functions like subtraction, multiplication and division. Now a lot of them are able to handle these.

They have travelled far from a situation where they would be shy and diffident, to now being able to interact with strangers, ask questions and learn from them. Earlier they were unruly, often using harsh language and breaking into physical fights. Now they are calm, use materials responsibly, take proper care of Thulir and have begun to cooperate among themselves and do group work without adult supervision.

Initially the children were hooked to the TV and many of them wanted to often time their visits based on TV schedules. Now the children are quite happy to forego TV and want to spend more time in Thulir!

Most importantly their self-discipline and motivation has improved. Most children can engage themselves in learning what interests them without our intervention.

We have a number of one to one interactions which are more effective than if we had catered to a large group in a class room kind of situation.

Of course, we would have liked to see much more improvement in many aspects, in being able to speak in English, for instance.

****** Why is Thulir not a school?

If Thulir were to be an effective small school using alternative methods, we would have to go for a good teacher/ student ratio, between 1: 8 to 1:10. So with the 2 teachers that we are, we would only be able to cater to a small group of maximum 20 children. Also ideally in a school, the children ought to have a range of teachers to interact with and so a place with just 2 teachers would be really inadequate. It is really difficult to get teachers locally, as there are hardly any qualified locals. Even the 10th/12th pass are very poor in their basics.

In contrast when we are a Resource centre, we can reach out to more children, as there are many more possible ways of learning. Besides, the situation is so bad in our villages for the majority of school going children that, we feel a small level of input can make a big change in the child/ learner [in terms of attitudes and self confidence] and help him do better in School/ or his community.

****** How do we evaluate learning?

This is indeed a difficult question. What do we take as our indicators? We need to keep in mind that Education is a long term activity and one does not get immediate results. Conventional school education does have its system of tests and exams. We have been wary of doing this till now...except for a couple of occasions when we gave a list of questions to be answered casually. Our fear is that, given the fact that tests and exams have been telling our children how bad they are, the children can get discouraged in their genuine attempts at learning, if we too started having regular tests. This is not to say we have a test/ exam phobia!! After all our dropouts have cleared the public exams papers that they were tutored for in Thulir! [In these 2 years Senthil cleared Social studies paper for class 10, Vediappan his class 12 commerce paper, and Mohan his Tamil and Social studies papers of Class 10].

From time to time we ask the children to take stock and list out what they had learned.

Ideally, we should prepare progress reports for individual children. Given the large numbers [more than 200 children!] this will be a too time consuming task. So at best we have a series of anecdotes of individual cases and a few isolated examples of achievements [conventional yardsticks of passing exams]. This is an area where we have to think more and perhaps learn from others, and work out credible methods in the coming years.

****** What about exams?

We have tutored students in the past 2 years to write their public exams. However this was very energy consuming exercise and these have to be necessarily a one to one situation for it to be a success as most children do not have their basic skills right. So we will be able to reach out to only a small number of children with tuitions for exams. We feel that merely passing exams does not equip the children to make a successful living. So if we can find ways for our children to gain exposure and confidence then they can go ahead and acquire skills and qualifications [including academic qualifications!] that would help them find livelihoods.

****** Are the students paying for use of Thulir? Should they pay?

No. Right now the students don't pay.

The activities and the methods used in Thulir are new for the children and also for their parents. It would not have been feasible for charging them for use of Thulir, for a service that they cannot recognize as valuable. It is true that a free service may not be appreciated as much as something that one pays for. But education being a long drawn process [unlike say getting treated in a hospital for an illness], is it fair to ask poor and economically weaker persons to pay?

We also feel that once we offer a definite package such as say a one year course on basic technologies that is proven to help students find a vocation in life, one can stipulate the cost for the course and make it known to the community. If it is a figure not affordable for specific applicants, one may have a system of scholarships.

****** What is the cost per child?

It is difficult to work out a cost per child figure. This is because of the various groups of children/adults making use of the facility to varying degrees. For instance, we have children who have come very regularly in the evenings for the past couple of years, and some who have been not so regular but who have made use of the facility and have benefited. Apart from this we have children who use the facilities on a full time basis [school dropouts]. Then we have had trainees who have undergone training and have learned academic skills. We also have had sessions with parents on learning. So it is difficult to work out a per capita cost.

****** Can Thulir take care of all the educational needs of the villages around it?

No. Thulir is right now at a very modest scale and for it to cater to all the needs [or even most of the needs] would require more resources, both physical infrastructure and human resources. Even with more inputs we don't see ourselves being able to fulfill all the needs in the coming years. There is scope for other people with specific skills or even other institutions to offer their special resources to cater to various aspects of education that we are unable to provide, given our limitations.

****** Where is Thulir going?

Most activities as mentioned above to be continued, and strengthened further. Apart from this, our work with the school dropouts/ post school youth will take further shape, this year. There would essentially be more focus on hands on skill development. Currently we are in the process of developing a curriculum for this course.

2006-04-13T11:04:00.000+05:30

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.

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2006-03-13T11:17:00.000+05:30










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!!

2006-03-04T13:21:00.000+05:30

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.

2006-03-04T13:09:00.000+05:30

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.

2006-02-28T19:16:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-02-28T10:42:00.000+05:30

Theatre workshop

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!

2006-01-27T18:53:00.000+05:30

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!]

2006-01-26T15:31:00.000+05:30

Pongal/ Shankranti Time!!

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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Happy New Year!

2006-01-05T16:28:00.000+05:30

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.

2005-12-18T18:34:00.000+05:30

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.

2005-12-07T18:19:00.000+05:30

This blog is for the purpose of updating all friends of Thulir about activities at Thulir. As you know, the Thulir website does have a news section, but we are able to update it only once every 4 months or so. Of course, we do send out the news updates to our mailing lists once evry 2 months.

We thought we would like to experiment with blogging as a means of more quicker sharing of events at Thulir. Do write back your comments to improve this further. The Thulir web site has been updated and the design changed this month. Do have a look [Thulir], if you havent looked at it already.

clay work

Sittilingi, 07 december 2005

We decided to celebrate the coming out of the sun [after weeks of rains and cloudy days], by moving outdoors and doing some clay work, last week. The various peices made by the children are drying in the shade getting ready for firing. If the weather holds [there is a cyclonic storm in the making over the Bay of Bengal as this is being written!], we hope to fire