Meet Sarita.

She does not know when her birthday is but she thinks she is about eight years old. She is enrolled in Malwa Public School as a Lower Kindergarten student and receives supplementary lessons at a learning center called Gyaan Ghar daily from 1:00 to 3:30 in the afternoon. This is Sarita’s first year of school. Before this year, she would stay home and work all day, helping her mom around the house, until her neighborhood friends came home from school. They would play around for a while, and then Sarita had to return home to help her mom with dinner.


In the meantime, her friends would attend afternoon classes at Gyaan Ghar. When they told her about the fun material they were learning in this relatively informal atmosphere, Sarita decided to go with them to check it out. She liked it, and that encouraged her to start attending Malwa Public School during the day.

Students like Sarita inspired me to start Gyaan Ghar. When I was in eighth grade, I noticed the children of domestic helpers in my grandmother’s neighborhood in Ludhiana (India) hanging around a nearby park in the afternoons. When I asked them if they would like to learn English, they were incredibly enthusiastic about it. So I started holding informal sessions for them every evening, for as long as they wanted. I would help them with their homework and teach them subjects they were not taught in school, such as art. The kids loved it. But I would visit Ludhiana only once or twice a year, and my long absences solicited daily questions such as “Where is Ratna Didi (sister)?” from the students.

Thus, I thought about setting up an organization that would continue to instruct them in these supplementary and creative aspects of education, even when I returned to the States after my summer vacations. In the summer of 2008, I consulted with a lawyer and registered the society under the name Gyaan Ghar, or House of Knowledge. I published an advertisement for teaching positions in The Punjab Tribune. After several candidates had indicated their interest, I interviewed them and selected the two I felt were most qualified and, more importantly, passionate about teaching. I then visited local public schools, discussing with principals which students they thought would benefit most from this instruction, searching for a pool of students both bright and underprivileged. I decided upon Malwa Public School, a school catering to underprivileged families in the vicinity of my grandmother’s home. On August 23^rd, 2008, the day I was leaving India, Gyaan Ghar had its first class.

The learning center has been running successfully ever since, with students branching out from their core school curriculum into extra-curricular subjects such as Health and Government, and activities such as dance and painting. 2010 is its third year of operation, and the school now has 42 regular students -- double the number first enrolled!

I am in the process of collaborating with Mr. Lamont to design a pen pal program between the students of Gyaan Ghar and the students of Flint Hill. My hope is that Gyaan Ghar will not just be “my school in India” but an endeavor in which each and every Flint Hill student can take immense pride.

Thank you so much, Flint Hill, for your incredible support of and involvement in this project. Please be sure to participate in the Husky Dress Fundraiser to take place on February 18th this year!

A Tribute to the Tribune

This month has been an exciting one for all those involved with Gyaan Ghar, as reporters from the Ludhiana Tribune have been interviewing both teachers and students for a special story covering the school and its objectives. Reporter Charu Chhibber visited our classroom this week to chat with students and board members about their experiences with the school, and also called me as I travelled along the east coast this summer, to discuss my vision for the learning center. Chhibber's article can be seen using the following link:

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2010/20100817/ldh1.htm#8

Having seen the story, a local news station, Day&Night, which caters primarily to Indians living abroad, also decided to do a story:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8AgOQ-9ZvY

We are so thankful for this recognition, and extremely appreciative of your continued support.

December

December was a month of exams and holidays for the students of Gyaan Ghar. With Malwa Public School exams starting on the 7^th, students separated into groups based on age and each group was taught by Radhika and Amanpreet on alternating days. Subjects included the usual English, Hindi, Punjabi, Math, and Science, but older students were also tested in Agriculture, Computer Theory, and Physical Education. Younger students had exams covering a wide range of topics such as oral English and Punjabi, Divinity, Drawing, and Neatness. Gyaan Ghar review sessions helped to reinforce topics covered on the tests. Neha, a second grader, remarked that she feels she “ha[s] done better on exams this year than any year before!” After exams, students began their holidays, focusing on computer classes and receiving instruction in conversational English from Mrs. Nomita Khanna. Mrs. Khanna also distributed new school uniforms, donated by her friend Monisha Oswal, to the delighted students. Students are now segueing into their next unit of extra-curricular study, Creativity, with their assemblage of personal collages.

November

The students of Gyaan Ghar celebrated Children’s Day in a festive show of song and dance. The function started with the singing of the national anthem, a shabad, and a song. Each student dressed in traditional Punjabi garb and, as a preliminary exercise in public speaking, presented a short introductory statement about her or himself. The group performed a Bhangra dance as well as many poems and songs in small groups.

Notable guests included Malwa Public School Headmistress Dhariwal and the parents of most students. Also in attendance were Professor Bedi and Doctor Sharma.

As return gifts, the students received personal cleanliness kits, complete with towels, toothbrushes, and combs. We hope that this token will remind them of the importance of our first extra-curricular subject, Health and Cleanliness. Students left the ceremony with a sense of accomplishment, and feeling refreshed for school the next day.

October

The students of Gyaan Ghar have completed their exams and will return to school on the 5^th of October. During the holidays, they attended lower-intensity morning classes followed by Bollywood dance lessons in the afternoon. Their report cards will soon be issued and we plan to obtain copies of these as well as earlier report cards to track their long-term progress.

Since the 1^st of October, we have instituted our first unit of extra-curricular focus, with the Rose Group (Lower Kindergarten to 2^nd grade) studying the Body and the Lotus Group (3^rd grade to 6^th grade) being taught about Health. Radhika and Amanpreet alternate daily in teaching the two age groups. Students enjoy these subjects and appear to be taking them seriously, although they recognize that these topics will not be covered directly on their school syllabi. This is an important sign of progress, as there was some resistance to this initiative before, because parents were skeptical as to the practicality of these topics. Increased communication seems to have promoted a better understanding of the usefulness of these extra-curricular initiatives.

September

Radhika and Amanpreet have divided the class into a Junior section and a Senior section and alternate daily between teaching the two. Both sections are in the process of exam preparation, with the Juniors reviewing the English alphabet in great detail as well as working on Punjabi, and the Seniors reviewing means of transport and vegetables. Such exam review will continue until their exams on the 14^th of September. Both groups also revise their poems and short stories daily.

One primary advantage of having two teachers is the level of personal attention we can give to each student, as well as the increase in time effectiveness that comes with different teachers able to address the learning styles and paces of individual children.

August

This month, I had the extraordinary experience of spending time with the students of Gyaan Ghar and getting to know them at a personal level. From helping Sonu review the Hindi alphabet after he returned home from his village to teaching Sarita how to use my camera, my interaction with the students was incredible. Though they were shy at first and my initial “ice breaker” activities were received as formal assignments, after a few days, we were shouting our ABCs and playing “rock, paper, scissors, soos!” so loudly that the whole neighborhood could hear us.

Each day’s lessons commenced with Radhika supervising students as they completed the day’s homework assignments. I would then lead an activity for the day. These included songs, games, and occasionally choreographed dances. At the end of class, Radhika would guide the students on what to review for the next day at Malwa Public School.

After class every day, Radhika and I held planning meetings to discuss strengthening communication between the students of Gyaan Ghar and the students of Flint Hill, as well as between her and myself. We plan to increase our communication via email and to institute a tradition of chats over webcam between Gyaan Ghar students and students here in America.

During this time, I also held interviews for another instructional position, hoping that the employment of another teacher would open doors for increased differentiation in the classroom, as well as uninterrupted learning time. After meeting with a few candidates, I selected Amanpreet Kaur on the basis of her thoughts about creative teaching methods, her achievements in extra-curricular fields such as music, and her interest in teaching underprivileged children.

Registration activities were completed this month, with the Memorandum of Association approved and signed by all members of the society.

What struck me most about the students of Gyaan Ghar was their passion for learning. It was not uncommon for some of them to show up for class up to an hour early, eager to learn something new. At the end of class, few ever wanted to leave. They are fascinated by anything and everything that is new and somehow foreign to them. This drive is extremely inspirational, and the enthusiasm I have observed on countless occasions before this is what led me to start the Gyaan Ghar initiative, and it is what keeps the school going.

July

This month, the students are preparing a number of poems and short stories in English, Hindi, and Punjabi, which they can be called upon to recite in class at any time. They also took a day-long field trip to the Rose Garden, where they picnicked and played a number of games.

There remains a male fraction of our student body. I have decided that, given their strong interest, I am willing to compromise on the earlier policy of only admitting girls to the learning center. This allowance will, however, further the goal that this center be a tool for the empowerment of women, as it will build the girls’ confidence to compete with and do as well as or better than the boys in class activities both at Gyaan Ghar and in their primary schools.

June

This June, the students participated in a number of creative activities including pottery, singing, and an introduction to Bhangra dance. Radhika’s sister assisted as the class was taught to paint delicate pottery. As a hired musician played the Dhol, Ms. Prableen Singh taught Bhangra, giving the students a chance to communicate with a teacher close to them in age. At the end of the month, students received recognition at an awards distribution ceremony hosted by Society Chairperson Amrit Kaur and husband Gurbachan Singh. Extra-curriculars are being balanced with core curriculum to foster an interest in those subjects not easily available in primary schools, and yet infinitely beneficial to the creativity of our youth.

Also this month, Ajay Chaudhry sent me the Memorandum of Association for Gyaan Society, to which I made some changes to prepare the documents to be signed by society members in order to finalize official registration and apply for tax exemption. This slow process of formal registration has shown me how difficult such matters can be in developing countries, and strengthened my belief in education as a tool to empower citizens and provide them with resources which would be otherwise unattainable.

May

This month, I conducted my first formal fundraiser for Gyaan Ghar. I made a fifteen-minute presentation at Town Meeting on the 8th of May, during which I discussed the state of primary education and explained the goals of Gyaan Ghar. The following Monday, Flint Hill School allowed me to hold a free dress day, on which students did not have to wear uniform if they paid five dollars. Many classmates and teachers participated and made generous donations, earning a total of more than 2,500 dollars. This is about half of what is required to run the learning center for a year. I am now in the process of brainstorming other potential fundraising initiatives to be conducted at Flint Hill and in the area next year.

April

Now that the number of students regularly in attendance at Gyaan Ghar has stabilized, I find it very important to keep these young scholars and their families aware of the importance of their experiences at the learning center. I plan to hold meetings between Radhika, Amrit Kaur, myself, and the parents of each of the students to stress the value of continued attendance at Gyaan Ghar. This process will also consist of communication with the teachers of Malwa School to gauge the improvement they have noticed in the students of Gyaan Ghar.

March

The number of students had earlier decreased from twenty to less than ten, due to the rising popularity of private tuitions over free instruction at Gyaan Ghar. However, attendance this month has risen to a new high, with thirty students enrolled regularly and about twenty-five studying during their vacations. Radhika has received a full-time job at the Malwa School, to which most of our students belong, which has allowed the children’s parents to observe the quality of her instruction and built their confidence in our organization. This has also given her a clearer view of the types of activities from which our students may benefit.

Although most students of Gyaan Ghar are presently on holiday, they continue to attend class voluntarily from 10:00-12:30 and the learning center has therefore tailored its curriculum for this time to be both instructive and entertaining, allowing the students to discover creative approaches to learning. For example, students participated in a drawing contest one day, and constructed table lamps from discarded material another. During the academic year, they also explore crafts such as knitting and embroidery alongside their basic school curriculum.

One teacher, Silky, has gotten married and moved to New Delhi and the other, Radhika, is engaged to be married within the next few months. She will continue to teach until that time. To find a new teacher, I plan to contact the promising interview candidates who were shortlisted but not selected during the interview process in August.

February

Gyaan Ghar is currently experiencing a severe shortage of students. Because parents of Malwa School students prefer private tutoring over group classes, many children have dropped out and returned to their individual tuitions. Parents have also expressed a concern that subjects covered by the learning center are not in conjunction with Malwa School’s curriculum.

To address the first issue, we have contacted the Camp School as well as the primary school supported by a local Gurudwara. The Camp School has agreed to select a group of promising students to be educated at the learning center. Because of the Camp School’s distance from Gyaan Ghar, these students will be provided transportation. In response to the second concern, we ensure that our teachers focus upon the primary school syllabus as set in place by the Punjab Board of Education. This includes three languages (Punjabi, Hindi, and English), Mathematics, Environmental Studies, Social Sciences, Work Education, Art Education, and Health and Physical Education.

January

The new year brings hopes for the future of Gyaan society. We have received offers of collaboration from Bharati foundation based in Ludhiana and the branch of Pratham based in our town, who are also interested in the theme of providing underprivileged primary school students with the tools they need to succeed in a creative and competitive world. We hope to expand our school in the future, whether in our town of Ludhiana or in other cities of India.

November and December

While I am trying my best to manage the curriculum, activities, and events of Gyaan Ghar from my computer and telephone in Washington, D.C., I also realize that I, sitting here, cannot fully control every aspect of the learning center. However, I believe that loss of control is a reasonable price to pay to ensure that the school runs smoothly. I believe it important to empower those running the center locally, allowing them to have a stake in our decisions.

That being said, Radhika and I continue to collaborate in brainstorming ideas to promote balanced development, including lessons in public speaking and speech delivery.

October

The students who have been working with our teachers since August have shown notable improvement in their performance in school examinations, as well as a rise in the level of their confidence and self esteem. Above all, passion for learning is being kindled in each of our young scholars. This progress and the currently stable student population have brought to my attention the need to establish a personalized baseline of educational achievement to measure students’ academic growth and improvement over time. I plan to acquire and/or develop a standardized test by which to measure the academic achievements of our students with those nationwide as well as internationally.

September

Students spent the month of September preparing for their exams, which ended on the 22nd. The headmistress of Malwa School expects that academic progress will be made visible on the exam results, and will report this progress to us after the tests. As the weather was pleasant this month, students walked to our house for class. We plan to keep this system in place until the need for organized transportation again arises. Some students arrived early and received additional instruction from Society Chairperson Amrit Kaur, who stressed the importance of good penmanship, especially in Hindi and Punjabi. There were in attendance three to five boys every day, whom we have decided to allow to stay on while the student body of Gyaan Ghar is becoming established. Although the students’ holidays are approaching, many would like to continue daily classes at the learning center during the break. This may be a possibility, depending on the availability of Radhika and Silky.

August

Gyaan Ghar had a very successful first month of classes. Each day, students were driven from Malwa Public School to our house in New Lajpat Nagar directly after school, and remained in class from 1:30-3:00. The number of students increased from eight to twenty-one. However, quite a few of these new pupils are boys, and Gyaan Ghar is a learning center aimed primarily at helping female students; this is an issue we will address in the near future. Two registers were created: one for attendance and one to track students’ overall progress. The teachers, Radhika and Silky, developed a system through which one of them teaches for the first hour of the class while the other one supervises the students’ work, and then vice versa. They decided upon teaching basic curriculum to start, in order to spark the students’ interest. Lessons taught daily included drawing, poetry recitation, Hindi spelling, English sentences, and basic mathematics.

As stated in the objectives of this school, we wish to help these students develop their creative and artistic abilities, but also to ensure that they flourish inside the classroom. Thus, the issue of teaching directly from their school syllabus has arisen. As the learning center is at its preliminary stages and students range from upper kindergarten to third standard, it is difficult for two teachers to teach material to children who differ so greatly in age and ability. In the future, we may divide students by grade level and assign one teacher to upper kindergarten and first standard and the other to second and third standards. This time has been very beneficial to the students as well as useful in making us aware of many issues we must address.

I should also inform you of my experience at Pratham, an NGO working on providing supplementary education to less fortunate children living in slum areas of Delhi. When my father met Mr. Sharad Pawar in New Delhi and happened to mention the establishment of Gyaan Society, Mr. Pawar suggested that I observe Pratham's work and arranged for us to visit them. I spent half a day visiting their various programs and learned that their primary mechanism of imparting education is by setting up mobile and stationary classrooms within the communities and engaging teachers who are also high school students from the same communities.

The Establishment of Gyaan Society

When will our teacher come again?

 During the summers of 2006 and 2007 in India, I taught the young children of domestic help, drivers, gardeners etc. working in my grandparents’ neighborhood in Ludhiana, Punjab. However, once I would return home to the United States, my students would all inquire as to where I had gone and when I would be returning. To address these long gaps in their experience with the alternative education to which I was exposing them, I decided to set up a non-governmental organization (NGO) through which these underprivileged children could continue to receive creative supplementary education outside of their primary schools on an ongoing basis.

Doing the Paperwork

I started this process with a visit to a company lawyer, who would help me with the formal registration of my Society (a term for NGOs commonly used in India). He informed me that I would need a list of seven society members as well as statements of my objectives for both the society and the learning center I was planning to open. In selecting these members, I looked for individuals who were involved in fields such as education, health, and general community service. The lawyer suggested that since I was a minor and therefore, could not be formally included in the official documents for the society, I should select someone from my family in India to be president of the society on my behalf. Since the learning center I planned to open would be in a vacant wing of our house where my grandparents live, I decided to offer her to be the President of the society so that she could directly supervise the school’s daily activities. The goals I compiled are outlined below:

Objectives of the Society

 1. To promote the wellbeing of needy members of the community.
2. To help the less fortunate members achieve their true potential by providing them with opportunities to overcome their social, economic, and developmental challenges.
3. To mobilize the more fortunate members of the community for assisting their fellow less fortunate community members in their efforts to achieve their true potential.

Objectives of the School
 
1. To give bright but underprivileged children a head start in life, and promote their well-rounded development.
2. To facilitate this process through endowment of knowledge in the fields of Language, Mathematics, Culture, Arts, Hygiene, and other areas.
3. To supplement their classroom learning with additional assistance and support in comprehending school curriculum and through provision of additional knowledge in a number of fields.

There’s a lot in a name!

I would also need to decide upon a name for the NGO and the school. After much deliberation, I came up with the inspiring and alliterative Gyaan Ghar, which means “House of Knowledge” for the learning center, and decided on Gyaan, or “Knowledge” for the NGO.

Search for Students

My next step was to find a critical mass of female students interested in attending my learning center. The reason I wanted to focus on girls was that there is strong discrimination against the girl child in India, and parents are often willing to spend more on the education of their sons in order to send them to good schools, than on spending on the education of their daughters. I collaborated with the headmistress of Malwa Public School, a neighborhood school catering mainly to children from poor families to identify female students from ages five to ten who were both financially underprivileged as well as interested in learning. The location of this school would allow for easy transportation of students who would need to walk because their parents work during the day. The headmistress was very supportive of my project and promised to send me a rickshaw full of potential students the next day. I prepared a simple and interactive curriculum for Gyaan Ghar’s first class and taught eleven students ranging from kindergarten to grade four for two hours that day. After teaching them for two more days, I held a meeting with their parents to convince them about the benefits of supplementary education.

Selection of Teachers

I then began my search for suitable teachers by having an advertisement posted in The Tribune, a prominent state level newspaper. The advertisement read as follows:

Wanted:
Young women teachers aged 18-25 years.
Full-time/part-time.
To teach at local learning center for primary school girls in New Lajpat Nagar.
Call 099153-44717.

I was contacted by seven interested candidates, whom I interviewed by myself. The focus of my questions was to gauge how creative and hands-on their teaching approaches were, and how passionate they were about teaching young children from underprivileged hoouseholds. Communication was also a key criterion, as I needed to send monthly curriculum and receive weekly progress reports via internet. In the end, I chose three finalists, whom I invited to prepare half-hour lesson plans and teach sample lessons. After observing these lessons, I hired two of them to continue teaching after I left. One would be a full time employee, to be paid Rupees 4000 per month (about $100), and the other would work part time, receiving a salary of Rs. 3000 per month.
The learning center now has twenty-one students, seventeen girls and four boys, and completed its fourth week of classes today.

Cost of Running Gyaan Ghar

I calculated that the total cost of running Gyaan Ghar is between Rs. 150,000 to Rs. 160,000 a year, which is about $4000 per year. I can manage to keep the cost so low because there is no need to pay the rent for the current premises for the learning center. Once we expand (other parents are already requesting that their children should also be admitted to the school), the costs are likely to increase. I intend raising all of the money required to support the school from America.

Reporting and Communications

In order to manage the learning center from here, electronic communications are key. I get regular (almost daily) reports from the teacher who is a full time employee, and she reports on school attendance, main topics covered, and any problems and issues that may have arisen. For example, though the stated purpose of the school is to teach female students, four boys also showed up one day. My teachers reported that two of the boys were extremely bright and from very poor families. I thought a lot about this issue and then decided to include a small proportion of male students, not more than 20%, at the learning center. Another issue I am now facing is the resignation of my full time teacher as she is getting married next month and her future husband lives in Delhi, about 200 miles away. Apart from regular contact with the teachers, I also talk to my grandmother every Saturday morning to discuss any housekeeping issues that need to be resolved. Based on these reports from the teachers and my grandmother, I send a weekly report to all of my society members. A sample of a weekly report is included in the next post.

A Bright Future

I believe we are off to a good start and I am very optimistic about the future – both of our society as well as of the poor bright children we are trying to help become equal citizens of this world.