Starting...

There's a bit of satisfaction that things have started moving and moving quite speedily, but also an uncertainty and insecurity of how things will progress further. I am happy that finally I own a center and have named it as ‘Vigyan Khel Ghar’ or ‘Science Toy House’ and run it independently for the children and also getting quite a good response as a start and something new for the children. But have a lot of things that needs to set in place to gain stability and regularity of students which is one of the biggest challenges and I don't know how I am going to do it. 

At this point I feel the need to think at various levels and bring all of my skills into action. At the larger level, I find a need to build a rapport with not only the children but the parents as well in order to generate a credibility of the project. Things such as fees, timings, etc. have to be fixed that suits them. More important at the classroom level, I need to keep up the enthusiastic environment keeping up the learning that I intent to generate. I am yet to fully develop my classroom management skills. I also need to go into the deeper pedagogic aspects of the method as well which is the main focus presently for my project. 

I am happy that I have youths around me from the community as well as my institute who are equally interested in this initiative and ready to help me and provide constant feedback and suggestions on what I am doing. Here I remember the Doctoral Degree of Kindness I received from my earlier program director and coach Leslie which stated that now I am expert in finding kind people around. I am happy that it actually worked and am thankful to her for that.

Some Clicks

Vigyan Khel Ghar (Science Toy House)

The toys from trash

Ready to fly the paper helicopter

Flying the balloon rocket

Smiles from toys

Finding the ground

It’s always very exciting to start something new. The mind starts imagining what it would be like, how would I go about it, what new things can I do which I didn’t thought earlier, what will be the results, would I succeed or not and so on. This is my condition after attending the Ethical Leadership Assembly of the Dalai Lama Fellows. The ELA was certainly a new experience and the project though an old one, would be newer experience too.

I have been doing my project on education with children earlier, but this time I wanted to be different – different in the way I would approach them and work with them. Since I had decided to work with children from the lower income families many of them staying in slums, I knew it would be very difficult to build rapport and keep up their motivation in the  activities. I know therefore that I have to be innovative, very innovative. For example, I thought do I really need to start by taking regular sessions with children? That sounds so traditional and boring. Can I just guide them and provide materials to make creative things, crafts and toys, and allow them to do at their home? The Education Center in the community can be open to them whenever they want to come. Can I start by playing with them what they are playing? And then slowly organize into sessions. These are some rough ideas going in my mind before I actually start. Its implementation however depends on where do I actually start.

I have been searching for a place to start the center for children and contacting few people for the same. I have come across two alumni from TISS who also want to start a center in a community in M ward area of Mumbai for their new NGO. They are working with youth of the community. We are planning to start a common center since neither I nor they want to use it full time. We can therefore share the expenses as well. However finding a place for the center is becoming a tough job. We have identified various places but none is perfect and has some problem or the other with them. But we are hoping to find it soon and start as early as possible. We talked to people from another local trust who is working with community people. They shared some of their experiences of how even after working honestly for the people, they don't get good response from them. It becomes very frustrating sometimes. It again remind me of the amount of effort and innovation I will need to bring to establish rapport and work with the people and the children.

What

Education for Creativity and Action is a project for rethinking on a new form of education beyond the present traditional methods of teaching and learning. It envisions learning in a more free environment for children with learning directed by children themselves and their activities rather by the teacher or a pre-planned curriculum.