About their world, about our world and something for you …

“Your world is different from us, it is as beautiful, we’d like you to see our world on 2nd October, we invite you to Cognizant Mumbai Campus”, Milind sir was addressing the tired students, teachers and exhausted outreach volunteers. This was after about 6 hours of rigorous stage performances, relay, Kabaddi*, Kho Kho** and rangoli competitions, between the schools of three neighboring villages to decide who gets the opportunity to visit Mumbai for the final round.

The occasion was the Talent hunt at Kharshi, one of the villages situated in the backdrop of the famous Panchgani, Mahabaleshwar area. The Kharshi students were joined by students from adjacent villages Dapavadi and Hatgeghar. Now, one wonders how much energy is left after walking about 5-6 Kms to the school which began early on a Saturday (@ 7am) and then waiting for the outreach members after the school till about 11:30 and considering the school provided lunch is still at least a couple of hours away. Well, read on …

The stage is set



The Audience cum Participants



Welcoming the Outreach members with some traditional cultural items,



Lining up for the competition to begin,

And, now here we go… The girls’ Individual 100 meters,

The 4*100 Relay

Enter the boys,
“Kabaddi” “Kabaddi” “Kabaddi” …

Meanwhile, what are the girls up to?

Rangoli competition …

What else, well the players are off to lunch now, till they are back, bring on the questions,

What is the point of conducting competitions for the kids who find it hard already to come to school, walking several kilometers each way and specially when procuring school bags, notebooks and stationary being the priority till now?

Quite right but, Imagine providing everything of the above said things to a bunch of kids and not letting them know why studying is important? Would that help? Would it help if a talented subset of these kids refrains from the competition just because they think they can’t mingle with the “city people”? And if they decide to stop at the high school level since most of the people they see have done that, not knowing what the world has to offer to the educated ones? Would it help?

No,
So while we do provide them stationary and build classrooms for them, we need to give them a sense of “where they can reach” if they continue their fight against all odds, the whole point of making them compete in the talent hunt is to select a bunch of them get them to our facilities and give them a sense of what can be achieved with education, something they can share with their friends back home. I will talk more on this but for now the kids are back, and it is Kho Kho time,

Gottcha!

And again …

“Kabaddi” “Kabaddi” “Kabaddi”

Can you feel the zeal with which they are playing?No announcement regarding any prizes were made before the competition began that day, because it was not about the prizes but was bringing out that zeal

Of course, we didn’t say anything about outreach members lifting the champions during the victory celebrations either…

Teachers join the girls’ team celebrations.

And so, coming back to the question,

It is to get some of them to visit places; they can reach if they continue on the path of gaining education, gaining knowledge, places like Cognizant which represent that knowledge industry. Simply to inspire them to use the means that we have provided (the stationary and the classrooms) and to kill any complexes they might have resulting from lack of exposure to the urban population as a whole by spending time with them; and then make them to spread the word within their world.

And what’s in it for us?

It’s a sheer delight of lending a hand, cultivating a dream, For Ashwin, it is to make his son, Arnav a part of the noble activity (like many other activities) he does on almost all weekends staying vanished from home. Here’s Ashwin with the youngest member of the volunteers on that day.

And let me tell you it feels awesome,

To spark this kind of enthusiasm

And such Joy

Oh, and the title does say, something for you… well yes, there’s an update***
Well remember the school kit drive? We had kept some of the school kits for display while collecting the donations, so well; they have found their recipients very well, and the notebooks collected during the notebook drive are finding their due beneficiaries too.

So, do say a “Thank you!” to yourself if you were a part of these drives in any way and if you were not, then, Well, what are you waiting for?

-Nikhil D. Purwant.

*Kabaddi – A team contact sport – for more information - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabaddi
**Kho Kho – an Indian sport - for more information - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kho_kho
***Kids from a high school in Pasli, in Velhe (25-Sept-2010).

The other side of the story…

What does it look like?

1. Weekend well spent?
2. Lush green Maharashtra countryside?
3. Bunch of software people having a blast?
4. Rented vehicles, Company umbrellas (!), and oh of course that group photo to tag faces on Orkut and Facebook.

Well yes, the answer is - “all of the above”. We* had fun, plus, it is just 60** KMs away from Pune! Want to be there next weekend? Of course you do!

But observe closely, do you see a fence? And the mountain peak behind it? And now if I tell you that fence surrounds a school? “Interesting”, you might say, well, then I’d tell you that every single day about a hundred of ten to fourteen year olds walk past those mountains to reach their school, yes, that is every single day.

When speaking about their challenges and what do they need, Mr. Phadtare, (one of the only four teachers there) tells, “ I let them go at 4 p.m. these days since some of them have really long walks back home and besides they have to work after reaching there, about 50% of them do not have electricity at home. The school is of course free, except for the examination fees. But even the stationary and the school uniform are hard to come by since they come from extremely destitute class of the society. My students are very talented they study hard and recently they did win most of the sport championships held at Taluka level, but we think it’d be nice to have a common sport uniform, just a T-shirt and shorts, you can get a common size, because as you see these kids are all of almost same size really, they eat the same rice and bhakri and have same long walks every day”.

He continues, “well, but stationary and a bit of exposure to the outside world is their immediate need, They are so happy to receive from you all, the general knowledge sessions, greeting card creation sessions and of course the classes some of you have conducted to simplify Math and English, will help them academically as well, they are such a great value ad and motivate my students immensely”, I liked the way he addressed them as “my students” and the sense of ownership behind the way he’d say it was very moving.

Upon asking why there are good number of girls in the 8th Standard, still less in 9th standard and hardly any in 10th their headmaster adds, “well, they marry them off by 9th or discontinue their education all together to put them to household work, even with boys, since there is no college nearby, many of them opt to help the family in whichever way possible”.

“Every family has one person working in hotel in nearby places to earn daily bread” Mr. Phadtare chips in, “my students understand the importance of education, they really do, for such a small age, they put in way too much effort even to attend it daily, for city people it’s once a month or once an year holiday thing, but these kids daily walk through the jungle they encounter snakes and everything, one of my students, a girl used to travel 9.5 kilometers one side just to be here”.

We visited three schools that day and everywhere the story is more or less similar. Poverty is driving them away from education, and then the lack of education in turn drives them back to suffering. For some, the school is a place they reach after crossing a mountain, a river, for some it is the 2 room facility additionally extended to a nearby temple to make room for the surge of enthusiastic kids driven by single aim “they want to study, they want to break that cycle”, and for the remaining it is the outcome of near divine efforts of their teachers.

The School, and just behind, yes, another peak to overcome to reach here

What did we do here?
Well, we taught the kids,

We played with them,

We gave away the stationary items their teachers had asked for,

And, Look! Everyone is so happy …

And we promised them we will come back to meet them. Frankly, that’s the least we can do to encourage them to continue their plight.

What did we learn? Well,

1. They WANT to study.

2. We CAN help.

And,

3. She MUST continue school…

So what do you want to do next weekend?

- Nikhil

* – Cognizant® Outreach volunteers.
** - For some students, that (60KM) is the average distance they cover to come to school every week by foot.