Notes and Photos on the Surveys

I think the feeling after last Saturday, April 12th, was that the survey went very well, and I'm glad that it was a success. It was a different experience compared to our first visit over a month ago, as we actually got the opportunity to meet the people we wanted to help on an individual basis, step into their homes, and really get to know them as fellow human beings. In total, we collected data from 48 houses in the slum.

Click here to learn about the survey itself that was used in this project. Its aim was to understand basic information about the economic status of these families as well as the levels of maternal health, children's health, and children's education.

Apta and myself (Sriram) began the event with an orientation with general guidelines for the surveyors, then we paired people up and began the survey.

The first step once we got there was to label the individual houses and in this manner provide them with an address for easy reference. This idea was the brainchild of Bhavya, and she did this in an excellent manner, dividing the slum into blocks. Alex, our mapmaker, and Malar accompanied her to label the houses.

All of the residents were inviting and were excited about the prospect of the survey and they were extremely cooperative. While the data hasn't been analyzed yet, we were able to learn very important things about the workings of the slum in terms of water supply, education, and their level of health awareness. This information will undoubtedly shape our future programs to improve their quality of life. We certainly found some flaws with the survey as we used it, but this was a learning experience in itself and we hope to make improvements on it as we continue to use it on the houses that weren't surveyed.

I'd like to thank Apta for her help. I doubt this survey would have happened without her. I'd also like to thank Siddharth for helping us to make the copies and of course to all our Tamil speakers, without whom this would not have been possible. Keerthi, Malar, Siddharth, Abhijana, Nazneen, Pamela, Rajesh, Rohit Reddy, Benedicta, Apoorva, Aslesha, Shubha, Koushik, Naveena, Deepika, and Benazir were all vital to the success of this project. And of course I'd like to thank everyone else who came along to accompany our surveyors.

Today (April 14th) Apta, Ahrar, Nivedita and I began the undertaking of processing this information, which is far from complete and will be the subject of a future post. We hope to make a summary of this information available soon.

Thanks to everyone for their help and participation!

Both Alex and I took photographs of the event.

Alex Myla's Photos (Click to view in Picasa)

Sriram Ramgopal's Photos (Click to view in Picasa)