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.

Along with volunteering i was also doing a Project with Global Health Department at University of southern California (USC) on Obesity and Malnutrition.

Teaching at Nai Disha was a unique experience in every day. Our day was divided into two half's, First from 10am to 1pm we were helping out in administrative tasks and resource creation for Nai Disha and from 1pm to 5pm during the actual school time we were teaching students about English in Particular.

For resource creation, we worked on creation of body parts from cardboard paper. The students will use these parts for creation of whole human body. The teachers will also teach them about hygiene in particular with respect to body parts when they will be making the full human body from these parts.

After that at 1pm the regular school started. The children are first given mid-day meal, which as i had mentioned earlier consisted of rice and Dal (protein). After the meal, the students get ready for assembly. Inspiring India songs are sung as prayer during the assembly. The meal comes from local temple, which provides it for free for the school. The meal also consisted of a very high quality basmati rice, which are quite expensive in India.

The most distinctive feature of the day was the lunch. It was kind of strange that we well educated students of USC were having pizza from Pizza Hut and the students of the school were eating rather a very nutritious meal. Although it was not kind of surprising to me as most of our food options at USC are rather fast food!!!

Now getting back to my teaching session, i was teaching with my teaching partner Nina who is majoring in Public Relations and Gender Studies at USC. Teaching the kids was kind of really tough at first especially they were quiet reluctant to speak in English. The class was kind of rowdy and discipline was hard to achieve. But as time went on in the day we had some control over the class. After a period of teaching, we took the kids to library for their library period. The library was a small set up in a normal class where the students read books in Both Hindi and English Language. The kids were initially not that confident in speaking English tough they understood great bit of English. Drawing was the most unbelievable skill they possessed. They drew unbelievably well and they showed us some of their drawings they did in past which were really awesome.

All in all, it was good start!! 

I will come back with my next post tomorrow!!

Hardik