An update from our in-country agent....
The group has been split as follows:
- Dominic, Amanda and Singgih: at the Natural Buddha School. It is a residential school for orphans, and street children who are brought in from railway stations, street corners etc. Because the children have been on the streets most of their lives or have not had any schooling the emphasis is more on art, playing, learning through games etc and then adding literacy as they get ready for more formal education. The volunteers have been doing really well at this facility. Dominic takes his guitar with him and the kids love him! Amanda and Singgih are good at pretending to be animals making sounds to help them learn about nature. They do a lot of singing and dancing and work there from 10:30 to 4:00 every day. Dominic has also started to help them make sponsorship profiles for all the kids so that they can get donors to sponsor individual kids. Amanda and Singgih have been making greeting cards that we have been distributing to our list for New Years. We spent about Rs5000 on materials and the orphanage produced 500 cards that were sold for Rs 25,000! Plus they have raised donations from the card distribution and raised almost Rs 40,000 that will go towards making toilets for the children. Dominic is very interested in staying involved with the project even when he gets back and help them with fundraising. He wants to set up an organization in Australia to be able to do this.
- Emma, Stephanie and Micheala are at Kamshet Orphange: They are teaching there. The kids are all ages and the orphanage has about 50 boys from the Kashmir border area. These kids have been orphaned due to Militancy and terrorism in the area. The school is one of the poorest in the area. Emma and the girls really see the need here. The organization does not have funds to hire an English teacher and rely completely on volunteers to teach English to the kids. They have two teachers for all the other subjects for the rest of the school. The volunteers have had some adjustment issues here initially as it is a Muslim school and they are strict regarding making sure everyone covers up. No sleeveless shirts, shorts etc. But they realize how much the children need them and how they are of real value to the project! Stephanie and Michaela have worked really hard and painted three classrooms in this school.
- Rohini and Kelly: Takwe Government School: They are at a typical government school in a small village! It is probably representative of 90% of Indian schools as they are in rural areas. It is a small school with 2-3 teachers. The volunteers were thrown in to teach as soon as they arrived! They found their feet pretty fast. Like all government schools the teachers are not really interested in teaching and most of the time one or two are absent. So the volunteers have quite a lot of responsibility on them. They are fully in charge of their classrooms and the kids. They teach and play a lot of games with the children. They are a huge hit with the village and have probably been invited into every home for tea, food in the area!
During the Christmas week all the volunteers decided to do a joint project. They decided to paint the classrooms in the Kamshet orphanage and the entire school at Natural Buddha school. The whole group collected money for paint and supplies and they washed, cleaned the rooms and painted for that entire week. While they painted it was decided that Angela and Erin would teach in their classrooms so that the teaching could still go on. It was a huge success!
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