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Final Report, March 2009
Ms. Helen Wagner
Introduction
This report is about my journey into a totally different world from Germany: India. I was nineteen years old and just finished my finals when I landed in Jodhpur at the beginning of August 2008 to volunteer with the Sambhali Trust for eight months. To prepare myself for a long term stay in India I already visited the country for a short period of time in 2007.
Although it was a long-wished dream that had been finally realized, my hands were shaking when I got off the plane. Back on the ground I drew in my first breaths of the wet monsoon air and was ready for my adventure to begin.
Before going to India I had little experience with children but decided to work with them for eight months. Teaching English, practice intercultural exchange and being a role model were the working fields I expected and I was prepared for.
During my last visit in India I have learned that many women here have miserable existences but still never complain. It seems that Indian people always find a reason not to lose their hope. I am impressed by their strengths and wanted to experience that.
Sambhali Trust gives women a voice and it is a platform where they can come and forget their sorrows for at least some amount of time. It gives them hope.
I worked in the Sambhali Setrawa Project which is part of the Sambhali Trust. The school is set up in a village near Jodhpur and offers English and Art and Craft classes for girls and women. The English classes have around 40 participants in the age of 4 to 19; the Sewing classes are mostly attended by older, married women. The school is open for all castes and aims caste integration.
Living in Setrawa
Setrawa is a village with around 3000 inhabitants situated about 110 km west of Jodhpur in the Thar Desert. My first thought was that it seems pretty small but then it became obvious that nearly everything essential (Food, toiletries, stationary etc.) is available. Besides, the village was vibrant: the women's Saris were colorful and music came out of nearly every corner.
Life there is very simple but the friendliness and hospitality of the people make volunteering in Setrawa an unforgettable experience!
The school building consists of three rooms: two classrooms (one English and one Sewing classroom) and a room for volunteers where they can sleep and cook. Living in the school was not always that easy: The girls often came to the Sambhali School to times where we do not have classes and then they knocked on our door and asked for Heeeeleeeen, Griiiiiiiis?! .This was really sweet and we found some great friends!
The girls love all volunteers who have volunteered in the Setrawa project so far. They can remember all their names and the little stories they tell are amazing. The girls also help you to integrate in the community. I got invited into so many houses that I cannot count them anymore. Very often I lied in my bed in the evening and felt sick because I was forced to eat a lot of food.
Setrawa is placed on the Jodhpur-Jaisalmer Highway and that is why buses to Jodhpur are available all the time. The journey to Jodhpur usually takes two hours. I went there on the weekends for relaxing or meeting the Jodhpur volunteers.
The Beginning
I arrived in Jodhpur at the beginning of August in 2008, in Setrawa a few days later.
There were two teachers working in the school: Rekha and Meena, but Meena quitted her teaching job in the school after my first week because of personal reasons. Both, Rekha and Meena, had been the main teachers in the school for two months till my arrival since there were no volunteers.
During my first days not many students attended the classes. Govind gave the farming season as a reason because the girls had to work on their parents' fields for the whole day.
Nevertheless the student numbers increased soon and then with the following months we had acceptable class sizes.
Time table
11am to 1 pm Sewing class
3 pm to 4 pm English class for non-school girls
5 pm to 6.30 pm English class for school girls
Rekha and I were teaching the 5pm classes; when enough girls came we separated the class in advanced and less advanced girls (small and big girls) and taught one class each. When we did only one class Rekha helped me to translate the lesson into Hindi so that the girls were able to understand it better.
In her free time she also showed me where to buy the best vegetables, milk, fruits etc. and introduced me to all the shopkeepers. For little money Rekha taught me how to cook the most important Indian dishes (I could not cook before!) and they were so tasty!
Rekha taught the girls in Sewing class and I played games or did easy art and craft with the younger participants (married women often bring their children into the class or the non-school girls are coming).
At the end of August, one month after my arrival, Griselda from Scotland arrived and stayed with me for the following months.
Setrawa is hard when you are alone, especially at the beginning where you have to find out everything by yourself so I was happy to be accompanied.
The project is different to the Jodhpur project in three major things: The girls are younger, they all belong to different castes (we have Untouchables as well as Brahmins) and most of them go to school.
The Classes
School is from Monday to Thursday and on Friday we do games and sports. On Saturday and Sunday the school has holidays.
Sewing class:
The Sambhali Setrawa School provides six Sewing machines as well as local fabric which the girls can use to learn sewing. Mostly the older girls do sewing and embroidery and the younger girls play games or do easy art and craft. In sewing class they also can sit together, share gossip and worries and escape their domestic duties.
What I taught:how to make chains, bracelets and key rings with beadspapercraft greeting cardspainting
In the past months Gris and I tried to teach them a consciousness for western design and quality. The girls produced simple shopping bags and cushion covers for selling in the Sambhali India shop. The things sold very well at the past two Clocktower stores and earning money encouraged the girls to collect new ideas and to design new products. It gives them confidence!
The Future:
It would be nice when the girls would be able to learn more skills with other volunteers in the future (such as block printing).
non-school girls:
The Untouchable Sambhali students Guddi (8 years), Laxmi (10 years) and Maya (8 years) did not go to school so Gris and I decided to make an extra class for these three young girls to teach them how to read and write the English letters. All of them were so curious and lovely! Maya did not come as regular as Guddi and Laxmi who came nearly every day.
At the beginning all of them had big concentration problems. They never really sat in front of a teacher and could not concentrate on learning English for more than five minutes. We tried to solve the problem with concentration games (for example breathing practice, meditation, sound games). The difference of teaching only two (sometimes three) girls instead of a whole class is that you are able to see the improvement faster. Guddi and Laxmi improved fast: five minutes of concentration turned into ten and ten minutes into half an hour. Suddenly we were able to teach them every day 40 min of English!
The Future:
So far they cannot read and write properly but Griselda and I sponsor Guddi, Laxmi and Maya to go to the private school (Saraswati School) in Setrawa. To learn the very basics they will have daily tuition in Hindi, Math and English from March to June with a teacher from the school. They will start in the first class from March on. We wish the girls good luck in school!
For more information have a look in Griselda's report about this topic!
School girls:
Teaching the school girls is the major task for volunteers. Their school ends at 4.30pm and they come to Sambhali School directly after.
The girls began every class with a prayer. When enough girls came we separated the class into big and small girls (advanced and less advanced) which was not possible every time at the beginning but after Christmas the student numbers increased so strong (after Christmas the average attendance was 35) that afterwards we separated each day. Gris and I were happy with this change, taught one class each and swoped every day.
We started each class by asking the girls What day is it today? which gave the lessons a certain regularity. One girl wrote the date (Today is the ... of ...) on the board and all girls copied it in their notebooks. Now they were able to see what we have done at what time.
Since christmas 2008 we taught one topic a week. We repeated the same topic from Monday to Wednesday and wrote a little test about it on Thursday. It is amazing how crazy the girls are about tests. The whole week they already said Helen, test, test! and they became really cross when I forgot to correct it.
The problem with the 5 o’clock class is that there is not any regular attendance. Most of the girls do not come regularly but maybe three times a week and consequently we had different girls every day which made teaching very difficult.
The English knowledge of the small girls is very basic. In class Gris and I taught them easy vocabulary fields (for example body parts, emotions, weather) and the most basic grammar (for example to be, to have, the clock). A very important topic was English sentence structure (subject – verb – complement) which is different to the Hindi one (subject – complement – verb). Helen, Gris? You my house come? was a quite common sentence we heard every day.
I doubt that all of them can read what is written on the board but they just copied it in silence which made it very difficult for us to know which girls understood a topic and which girls did not. Nevertheless everyone was trying so hard and that made us happy.
The knowledge of the big girls is much better although they are not able to make longer conversations or write texts (for example little stories).
Nevertheless most of them understand new grammatical topics quickly which makes teaching the older girls a lot of fun.
Before Gris and I left in March we bought English-Hindi dictionaries for the regular attendees of the big girls class to use during English class and at home.
The Future:
Till the arrival of a new volunteer Usha teaches the 5 o'clock class alone. And when the attendance will keep that strong it will be very difficult for her. Gris and I have bought Usha a book called How to teach English? which will hopefully help her to plan the lessons.
Projects
World project
Where is India?, we asked in English class when starting the World project. Nobody could tell us the answer and I asked myself what they are actually learning at school?!
Gris and I bought a big map for the classroom and each girl had to pick her finger once on India.
After that we gave them little information about the world itself and comparisons like Vimala is 10 years old, the World is 4,600,000,000 years old made it visual for the girls.
We divided the class in groups of four and gave each group the name of a continent, a white poster, travel magazines and information about the continent. Then they had to design a collage about it. The results were seven amazing colorful posters which the groups had to present it to the rest of the class.
Animal habitats
We divided the class into groups of five and gave each group the name of an animal habitat (such as desert, sea, jungle). The groups had to find out names of animals living in the animal habitat and then design a poster about it. At the end the groups had to present it to the rest of the class. Everyone had a lot of fun during the task and they wanted to know everything.
Vocabulary boxes
In the small girls class we focused on teaching vocabulary: One time we did vocabulary boxes with them so that each girl had one box at the end. The next days we collected different vocabulary fields (such as school, fruits, family) on the board and they wrote it on vocabulary cards (one side in English, the other side the Hindi translation) which they put in their boxes. At the end of each lesson they had ten minutes to learn the new words. The vocabulary boxes were a great success and in the test we have written about the new words they knew all of them.
Speeches
Some of the girls are not very confident. To force them to come out of their shell we gave each girl a little picture and in 20 minutes they had to prepare a little speech about it. They were allowed to make notes and to use them while talking. After 20 minutes preparation each girl hold her speech loudly in front of all the other girls. The aim was not what they said but how they said it.
Attendance chart
In the hope to increase the class numbers we created an attendance chart. Every time a girl attended in the Sambhali School she got a sparkly star and when collected twelve stars she got a little gift (for example pencil, eraser). The chart hung as a visual statement in the classroom. It was a big success: the girls got so excited about collecting stars and counted them before the start of each lesson.
Trips and Partys
Birthday Party
For Rekha’s birthday, Gris, the girls and I surprised her with a party. In Jodhpur we bought two cakes (you can’t buy them in Setrawa), decorations, party hats and balloons. We prepared everything and hid. When Rekha arrived for English class we jumped out and started singing “Happy Birthday”! She was happy because it was the first birthday party she’d ever had. The girls enjoyed eating the cake, the fruit salad and dancing to Hindi music. Rekha’s sister Usha won the dancing competition. Wearing their party hats the girls burst the balloons and sang songs together. It was a great day.
Cinema Trip
One day we took twenty older Sambhali participants to the Cinema in Jodhpur. We rented a jeep, brought a lot of biscuits and juice and started the trip early in the morning. The girls were so excited because most of them had never been to the cinema before. We watched the film Slumdog Millionaire which the girls liked a lot. Afterwards we went out for dinner and shopping. We also visited Mandor Garden near Jodhpur and everyone was sad when we had to go back in the evening. It was an unforgettable experience!
Tiweri
After we took the older girls to the cinema the smaller ones were sad because they wanted to join us. That is why we decided to take everyone who wants and is allowed to come to Tiweri (a huge park in the middle of the desert). More than 60 girls joined the trip and we had to rent a big bus to get everyone there. The trip was so fun: we ate so many cakes and biscuits and played funny games. The girls laughed a lot and our three Dalit girls Guddi, Laxmi and Maya were totally integrated!
Working Fields for Volunteers
Volunteering in Setrawa is a full time job as volunteers have hardly any time for themselves.
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