I'm excited to write this blog entry. This is my first entry in a series of 3 entries i will make about my volunteer experience at Nai Disha. I will describe my daily experience of all 5 days of teaching i did at Nai Disha.

I will start with a brief description of what is Nai Disha and how it functions. Nai Disha Education and Cultural Society is a registered school, which admits and nourishes students from economically weak sections of the society. The school runs from 1pm to 5pm in a government school. The government school has regular hours in morning from 9am to 1pm. Improper and irregular teaching is a big problem in government schools and often the parents from economically weak sections feels that it’s not worth to send their children to school. Child labor is a big problem in India when it comes to economically weak sections and their parents find it more worth that their child works rather than study. This is where Nai Disha is different as it provides free education as well as it also tries to retain the children to studies by letting the parents know how important it is to send their children to school.

In India, the children from under-privileged background are highly under-nourished. Nai Disha also provides a mid-day meal which consists of nutritious rice and Dal (protein) and teaches them about what is good to eat and what is not.

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It's 5:30 AM. Today, is going to be a long day.

We visit another school in the outskirts of the city and more like in proper Haryana (a state on the border of Delhi). This school is already very different. We pass by closely packed one room houses and plastic tent and pepsi stand shelters that make up a slum. I imagine that some of my students live in homes like these, and I realize that it takes a lot to squash a child's happiness and energy. I know some of my group members have been getting frustrated with their students, but it's hard to get frustrated with them when you know they have such a stressful situation to deal with at home.


We meet the head of the Arpana Tuition center. It's different from Nai Disha in that it doesn't run an primary or secondary level school. It's like an after school tutoring center that people pay a small nominal fee for. The differences are immediately striking - the students are considerably more disciplined because they are beaten into straight lines and arrows by their government school instructors. Our kids on the other hand run around as free as any American student. The headmistress/ founder tells us a lot about the place and its origins - apparently the surrounding community used to be a slum outside of AIMS/a nice area in Delhi and due to complaints, the slum was dismantled and the community was moved to single room government housing development. Prior to this, the Arpana project had spent a great deal of effort to establish a repertoire with the community leader and had set up an easily accessible tuition center. With the move, they faced difficulties building and buying facilities to restart their program. Eventually they were successful, even though, not surprisingly, they ran into a whole host of problems dealing with bureaucracy and the government and its corruption. At some point they got the ball rolling again.


Shakuntala maam tells us of a story about one girl that had saved up money and approached a tailor to be taught tailoring, but the tailor refused to teach her. Somehow she persuaded him that she would be a committed student - and with financial help from Arpana, she began her apprenticeship. In a few years she became a skilled tailor and earned some money on sewing wedding related clothing and material. All the while, at home, she had an alcoholic and unemployed father, with a mother that was working very hard to feed her husband and two daughters. Her father was very discouraging of her entrepreneurship but she plowed on regardless. At some point her parents found a suitable marriage match for her and finalized it the point of engagement. This girl was not too fond of this guy, and so she told her parents that she wouldn't marry the guy. Her father flipped and told her that there was no chance she could cancel the engagement because he'd already dished out 2000 rupees for the premarriage dowry. She asked him what he had gotten all up in cahoots about when she could and would rather pay him that money back and do what she wanted to do. She ended her engagement and worked on. Eventually, she found the right man for herself and with the help of Arpana, she's conducting herself a decent wedding in a couple of months. In the meantime, despite her issues with her father, she decided to spend most of her savings to buy a home for her mother and sister. She didn't feel it was right to leave them behind.


Next, we head over to the community hospital, where AIMS doctors rotate through at least once a month each. I isn't clear whether the hospital are run on this volunteer staff entirely, or whether it is some sort of combination. The hospital is certainly inspiring: the people are friendly and they seem to have their work in order. After that, a few of the mothers accompany us to show their homes to us. We step in a one room home of a resident--Aishwarya. She hefts a big-eyed, small nosed infant on her hip, but there are six more family members that are out and about at the moment but call the room their home as well. What is amazing to see is that all of the residents have immunization cards that have been administered by the hospital we've just visited. On the card is a detailed list of immunizations that have been taken and that still need to be taken. Krithika, my good friend/trip member, and I are pleasantly surprised at the detail and follow-through with the immunization cards. Considering the way our guide interrogates one mother about why her baby hasn't had the latest round of shots, it seems like the community prides in its ownership over these cards, and the health of themselves and their kids.


On our way back to the cars, Krithika discovers that our guide is a migrant worker originally from Tamil Nadu, a southern state in India. Embracing one another, the two converse in Tamil and hold hands all the way back to our meeting point. While I gaze at a towering smoke stack, seemingly distant because of a thick shroud of smog, I gather that the women had migrated from Tamil Nadu eight years before and has since seen limited improvement in her life. For a moment, I wonder if there are any migrants from Andhra Pradesh and my ears perk up, hoping not to hear Telugu in the streets and makeshift shelters.

After the first days successes, Fili and I found ourselves a little better prepared for the second day. We went in to Nai Disha's administrative center (which had been the original site for the school until they'd gained so many kids, they had to move their class sessions to a government school nearby) and spoke with Sangeeta maam about the kids' access to medical services. Sangeeta maam tells me that Nai Disha has always been more concerned about this because they value holistic support and fortification of their students. And since Dr. Daga, a professor of medicine at a university in Delhi, is one of the founders and board members of Nai Disha, it seems natural that Nai Disha has had a special interest in the health needs of their students. What's at first a simple question regarding the mysterious ambulance program, turns into an interview about Sangeeta maam's opinion Nai Disha and its position in providing the students basic medical checkups and how far Nai disha has come in reaching its goals. Apparently only a year or so after the inception of the program, a student, who was well-liked, abruptly stopped coming to school. When the absence grew prolonged, Sangeeta maam and others inquired the family and found out that the girl had died. This event had apparently spurred the organization to search for and implement some basic checkup schedule, which would give some warning to the administrators and family members that students are ill. Since the girl had died of TB, there was an additional scare of risking other students to exposure.


Nai Disha succeeded in enlisting Shakuntala Singh and her mobile medical van. She comes every other week with an intern from a local medical college and they distribute vitamins and cold medicines and mild antibiotics for certain problems. They keep track of what they've given and the medical history on yellow cards that they pass to the kids and take back from the teachers --the whole system seems to work out all right. I'll get to meet them on Wednesday.


In class today the kids are much more excited and attentive, since they know me and Fili a little more. The night before, Fili and I had blasted out a plan that included simon says and the body parts, the nutrition diamond or pyramid, drawing healthy meals and lunchboxes, introduction of the tobacco avoidance material (because it would be easier with a hindi speaker around), and forming a presentation on tobacco avoidance. We start out with a recap on nutrition and surprisingly the kids have remembered Salman Khan and protein and breads and carbohydrates -- in fact, while they're shoving kaddi and chawal into their mouths before class, they tell "hey look didi (sister) im eating daal, im eating protein, im gonna have muscles like Salman Khan."

They get bored of the review and I introduce the Simon says game and they start hoping around and accusing each other of being out. We eventually break for the tobacco avoidance portion of the day.


Surprisingly all the kids are very familiar with the notion that smoking and using tobacco is harmful for you and that it causes cancer. In fact one of the kids explained that his mother had died because of tobacco related cancer. They don't seem phased though. I give them a sheet drafted by the Public Health Foundation of India and have them the read it in English and then translate it back to me in Hindi so that I know they've understood. While Fili is here, we get them to organize a small presentation. I pick Muskan and Jyoti to narrate because I want to make them feel like they're important contributors to class and education--and since their parents will see this presentation, I want them to know that their girls are worth educating. I make sure everyone has some sort of part, but Fili and I can't get Devashish or Kanchan to participate - I don't force them or anything or make them feel bad, it's their choice and maybe they have a really good and terrible reason not to want to participate.


By the end of the day, Fili and I are exhausted but smug--we'd finished everything we'd set out to accomplish for the day. I'm sad that I'll be losing Fili to a wedding--but I hope that since the kids have gotten used to me, they'll be good for the rest of the week.

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