Update from sponsorship interns Amelia and Claire in India

The end in sight :-(



With only three weeks left at the Foundation to Educate Girls Globally, things are starting to hot up! With an intense wrap up week of meetings, video editing and finalising projects planned in Mumbai, we’re up to our elbows in preparations.
Claire has been busily planning the layout and writing voice-over scripts for Creative Learning Training (CLT) videos. These will be used to introduce more inclusive, supportive and engaging techniques to teachers – an important step in assuring communities that school is a worthwhile place for their daughters. The DVD provides a visual resource for three day training sessions held with teachers. While teachers need practical examples of CLT activities, the other challenge has been writing explanations of the importance of CLT and how to adopt the mindset into their classroom.
Surprisingly, most of these methods are new and radical to teachers. The simple gesture of asking a student to complete a sum on the board is a completely new technique to traditionally trained teachers. Creative Learning is a whole new mind-set for these teachers to adopt. The DVD will also include interviews with teachers who are using the new techniques (with very positive results!) These interviews will help teachers who are new to CLT to understand how CLT works and how it will improve their learning environment.
Soon the scripts will take on a whole new form as they are translated into Hindi and Claire’s work will become strangely out of her hands...unless she learns Hindi in one week of course. Again we are reminded that language and cultural barriers can become such a huge handicap to foreigners like us who are trying to work with grassroots organisations. But we do the best we can.
Amelia is discovering the complexity of documenting the stories of some of the girls FEGG has worked with. These stories will represent FEGG’s work with girls who have dropped out of school, community leaders, and members of the Girls Council Leadership Groups. Now that the data collection stage has finished, negotiations have started for a final model for how we present these stories – a crucial part in how their message is conveyed. Amelia was blown away by the plethora of methods and opinions on how this should be done. With so many minds coming together, we should end up with a very strong result!
Our hard work was well rewarded with a gift from Dinesh and all of FEGG. We were driven around in luxury – we had a jeep all to ourselves – visiting Chitturgah, the largest fort in India. We learned of the constant battles for its ownership and the intrigues of the court. We had another dose of Rajasthani history with a visit to the grave Chatak (a brave horse who sacrificed his life to save the war hero maharana pratep) and a hilltop museum explaining ancient power struggles between divided states.