Plans for May 2009

May, 2009 is around the corner. For most of us, this means that we won't be in the city for this month. Nonetheless, we have a number of plans for Sangam India that continue throughout May.

• Educational Programme - We have plans to continue the educational programme that started last March in operation throughout May. It will be run by the members who are still in Chennai. However, we are short-staffed and we could use all the help we could get. Please send us an email at info@sangamindia.org if you can volunteer your time, on a weekend, for just a few hours. During this month we will hold the same programme but it may be simplified due to the reduced staff on hand. Nonetheless we are committed to maintaining our relationship with the community and to making sure the children will still have our company. Stay tuned on this blog with more exact details of upcoming visits.
  
• Research - During May, a lot of our members will be doing extensive research on various things in order to advance our work. This will range from talking to other NGOs in people's hometowns, researching educational opportunities, vocational training programmes, and legal research to advance Sangam India to NGO status.
• Skits - A number of volunteers from Dallas, Texas, have written a series of wonderful skits demonstrating various human values. We hope to teach these to the children of Ramavaram when we get back and we need help with translating them from English to colloquial Tamil. If you can help with this, please let us know.
  

Promotional Packet

The Promotional Packet contains the following:

• Sangam India English Flyer
• nXG: "Youngistan in Action" article
• Times of India: "Coming Together for Health" article
• Times of India: "Sangam India holds health camp for kids"
• The Women's International Perspective: "Students in India Take Social Change into Their Own Hands"
• Kumudam article, in Tamil and with English translation
• Anand Charity: “Building a better India, slum by slum"
• A selection of photographs from the last year.
  

It is attached here as a pdf file. It is designed to print on A4 size paper (if you should need a 8.5 x 11 format, please contact us and we can prepare one.)

Download the Promotional Packet (8.94MB)

edit: this should print well on both size A4 and 8.5 x 11 paper.
Additionally, a promotional e-packet is not available for easy on-line viewing.

Notes for Meeting Held on April 28th, 2009

Here is a summary of the meeting held on April 28th, 2009:

1. Legal
• Discussed various aspects of Indian NGOs including citizenship requirements, property requirements and FCRA limitations.
2. Educational Programme - May
• Safwan to be in charge of the programme for May.
• We will working on assembling him a team to run the programme during the month. Volunteers are greatly needed.
  
• Ideas:
  
• simple games
• coloring programmes
• reading programmes
3. Plans for May
• Navyatha, Shilpa, Nivedita, Sriram - to continue legal work.
  
• Rifa - Educational research in Bangalore
• Sriram and Nivedita to create a promotional packet
• Mounica - to research local NGO
  
• Thinesh - protein packets
• Vasundhra - hygiene research, contact NGOs in Delhi, and to research vocational programme.
• Everyone promised to come up with a lesson plan and to research idealist.org
• We made a facebook group for active members to discuss the projects they are working on. All are invited but it will be an active discussion to work out the current business of Sangam India. To join, please contact us.
  

Anand Charity: "Building a better India, slum by slum"

Anand Charity is an Non-Profit Organization based in California which "aims to identify and provide need based financial support to organizations involved with health care, primary education and disaster management in India." In the short span of 2 years, they have been able to donate over $32,000 for charitable causes across India.

We've been mentioned in this quarter's "News @ Anand," a quarterly publication by Anand Charity. You can download the pdf by clicking the link above, and you can also read the full interview (not included in the newsletter) here.

Passing by a slum or a group of poor children in soiled clothes playing on the streets is an everyday sight in almost every city in India. So common, that we tend to ignore it. But for two NRIs who had come to Chennai to study Medicine, this plight could not be overlooked. Just a few months into college, they decided to start Sangam India, a charity organization, with an aim to reach the underprivileged sections of the society. Since its inception in early 2008, they have been working with the Ramavaram slums, around River Adyar in Chennai. They have ameliorated the slum conditions by providing nutritious meals, sponsoring education and medical camps for its residents.


What inspired you to start Sangam India?
It is very easy to turn a blind eye to the injustices and inequalities that we encounter in day-to-day life, but we have a responsibility to those around us. Sangam India started out of a desire that we, as medical students, should do at least something small for the underprivileged. We started out as a small group giving out food and are now growing into a larger organization, taking on health care and education initiatives in addition to our original aims.

Click here to read the full interview and click here to read the newsletter (pdf).

Thanks to writer Mrinalini Daran for taking the time to write about us and for helping to raise some awareness about the work that needs to be done in Chennai.

Educational Programme - Day 6

Today was the sixth day of our Educational Programme, and overall it went well. Today we had a lot of kids getting involved and we were able to reach our objectives that we planned.

Once we got the children together, we got started. We decided not to use the laundry facility because most of the kids were already in the field and it would have been too difficult to get them to come. The first part of of our programme was to get the kids together and to teach them about pollution and about keeping their environment clean. Mathangi and Vivek did a great job telling the kids about the importance of using clean water and about taking daily baths. They also emphasized the importance of throwing one's trash away in a designated place.

The second part of our programme was the continuation of the "When I Grow Up..." programme that we started on the third day of our educational programme. Having previously discussed doctors and teachers, we continued our programme with a discussion of policemen. Safwan, one of our members, dressed up as a policeman and told the kids about what they do. A number of kids were excited about this and wanted to be policemen and women. He told them about the importance of following the law and that it took a lot of studying, physical exercise and hard work to be a in the police. We hope that were able to inspire a few of them about this line of work. In addition, many of the kids enjoyed getting a chance to try on the police uniform afterwards.

The final part of our project was done by Alex. He taught the kids how to make paper airplanes. This activity was a hit with the kids and they had a lot of fun learning how to do it. It also helped them to learn how to follow directions and it gave us a chance to interact with the kids one-on-one. We all had a lot of fun doing this project and we hope we can do something like it again.

We'd like to thank people for coming out for their first time today. Vivek, Manoj and Neil were all very helpful and we hope to see more of them in the future.

This concludes the first part of our educational programme. Many of us will be going home for the month of May. We do have plans to continue the program next month with the people that will be in Chennai. If you can help volunteer for our project some time in May it would be most appreciated, and we really hope you will contact us about this. We look forward to coming back in June with a lot of fresh energy.

Click here to see the rest of the photos from today's trip.

Photos from Educational Programme - Day 6

Here are some of the photos from today's Educational Programme, held on April 25th, 2009. Check back tomorrow for a post about the visit.





Click here to view the rest of the photos.

Today's trip to Ramavaram

Here is a brief summary for today's trip to Ramavaram. We have a couple of activities planned for the children.

Police-man: In a continuation of our "When I Grow Up..." project, we will have one of our members dressed up as a police man. He'll tell the kids about what policemen do and the importance of being honest and the value of hard work. We hope to inspire a few kids about this line of work for when they get older.

Environmental health: The educational committee has a few points about environmental health that they plan on presenting to the group.

Orgami: Alex will teach the kids a few points about Orgami as today's activity.

Hope to see you all there!

Upcoming Educational Programme - Day 6

This Saturday is the last day of our Educational Programme before most of us leave for our May holiday. (However, we do have plans to continue the programme throughout May.) We hope that you can come out and help us with it!

Check back tomorrow for the plan that is being by the Educational Committee.

Hope to see you all there! Please contact us and let us know if you're coming. As usual, it begins at 4:30PM and goes till about 6:00.

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Update: for the time being, we are now going to be holding our programme in the nearby laundry facility. To get there, you just have to turn around the corner of the street. For those of you who have been with us for a while, this is where we have held our health camps. This should save us from crossing the river which is a rather sticky process.

Educational Committee

As you might have gathered by now, we have recently established an Educational Committee, under the umbrella of the Infrastructure section. This is headed by Bhavya Krishna, who has been actively involved in planning recreational activities for the children since Sangam India's inception. The purpose of setting up such a committee is to dedicate a sector of the Sangam India members to planning insightful activities for the children that combine fun and entertainment with learning and positive reinforcement. So far, the activities that Bhavya and her team have been wonderful, and we are looking forward to seeing more from them.

Members of the team are:

• Bhavya Krishna
  
• Sahithi
  
• Vishnupriya
  
• Pranusha
  
• Nithya
  
• Nitya

If you are interested in being a member of the team, even if you don't live in Chennai, we need you. If you have any ideas for learning objectives, games, or activities for the children, please let us know and we will put you in touch with the committee. We are in need of bright minds to help us move our Educational Programme forward.

Also see Lesson Planning: Our Objectives

Notes for Meeting Held On April 21st, 2009

1. The Educational Programme is scheduled for this Saturday, 4:30. The Educational Committee is in charge of developing a programme.

2. We hope that we can arrange at least two days of our Educational Programme over the month of May, when most of our members will not be in Chennai. We plan on contacting various members who will be in the city over this month. The Educational Committee will help to develop the programme for these weekends as well.
3. We hope that we can get permission to use the nearby laundry facility where we held our previous health camps for running the programme and we will talk with the people in charge about this possibility.
4. We talked about developing a programme for older kids to get them more involved. Some ideas were:
• To get them involved by giving them responsibility and putting them in charge.
• To ask them for their input.
• To designate one of our members to be specifically in charge of them.
  
5. We discussed some ideas for the Educational Programme and our members will research for more ideas over the May break.
6. Finally, we set some goals for this May:
• Acquire NGO status
• Create lesson plans for the next few months
• To talk with other NGOs in member's home cities that are doing similar work and learn more.
  

Panorama of Adyar River and Ramavaram Slum

Panorama of Adyar River and Ramavaram slum, June 2008 (.jpg)

Educational Programme - Day 5

Yesterday we had the fifth day of our Education Programme. It was a fun day, a bit more laid back than usual, and we were able to teach the kids a few things about road safety and about teachers. We didn't have the usual group today but we had plenty of people coming after a long break.

After we got the kids together, we had them sit down in a circle and teach them about road safety. Yogesh told the kids about the importance of safety signals and about how they should cross the road safetly. It was great to see the kids participating in the programme with their own contributions.

After this, Sivaprakash and Yogesh told the kid about teachers. Several of the kids wanted to be teachers, as we found out the third day of our educational programme. We explained to them what teachers did. We had a small whiteboard, which was kindly lent to us. The kids had a fun time lining up in front of it to write their names on the board.

Because we finished our programme earlier than usual today, we spent some time there afterwards talking and playing with the children. We played catch and other simple sports and the kids had a lot of fun. This wrapped our day. We hope to come back again next week to spend some more time with these kids!

Click here to see the rest of the photos from today's trip.

Photos from Educational Programme - Day 5

Here are some of the photos from today's trip to Ramavaram as the fifth day of our Educational Programme.

Click here to view the rest of the pictures.

Upcoming Events: Educational Programme, Day 5

Tomorrow, April 16, 2009, is Day 5 of our Educational Programme. The educational committee has developed the activities for the program.

For tomorrow, we plan on doing three things. The first part of our programme will continue the "When I Grow Up..." activity that we started two weeks ago when we had the children draw pictures of what they wanted to be when they grew up. Last week, we had Dr. Thinesh come and tell the kids about what doctors do. This week, we are going to show the kids what teachers do, with a mock teacher. We hope that this might inspire a few children to want to become teachers, and perhaps further the respect for the profession so that they become better students.

For this week's activity, we are going to focus on road safety. We will teach the kids about the importance of following the traffic instructions on the road so as to prevent accidents. We are going to make this an activity and we hope the kids will get involved as they cross our pretend road.

Finally, to meet our goals of health awareness, we are going to teach the kids about fomites and general sanitation, and teach them the importance of covering their mouths when the cough, about sharing things, etc.

As usual, we plan on being there at 4:15 so we can get started by 4:30. Please let us know if you can come; as always, we are in need of help!

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Lesson Planning: Our Objectives

Movie Clip: What Doctors Do

This is a short clip from our visit on April 11th, 2009. In it, Dr. Thinesh tells the kids of Ramavaram what sort of work doctors do.



Lesson Planning: Our Objectives

Notes for Meeting Held On April 15th, 2009

Today's lunch meeting covered the following:

• Educational Programme is on for this Saturday, at 4:30PM. The Education committee will develop the activities for this weeks program.
  Go to event on facebook
  
• Data entry work is still on hold. If you can volunteer to help us get it done, please let us know.
• Several short skits have been written by student volunteers from Texas. These are going to be translated into Tamil so we can have the kids perform them.
• Legal: We are talking to a lawyer from both the United States and from India to help us get this work done.
• Bridge: we are still trying to find a good way to help us cross the stream for our activities in the slum.
  

Updates: April 14th, 2009

1. Today's board meeting has been postponed to tomorrow at 12PM, due to the holiday today. There we will discuss this Saturday's educational programme. We invite everyone to come if they have any ideas to share. Please let us know if you plan on coming.
   
2. We need help with the following. If you are interested, please let us know:
• Data entry: we are working on compiling our data that we collected from our surveys so that we can enter it into statistical software and then analyze it. We need volunteers to help tabulate the data collected into excel.
  
• Our legal team is working on getting NGO status. If you can help them in this regard, it would be highly appreciated.
• If you can help us research about local vocational training programmes, it can help us get this part of our project moving forward.
  

Thanks a lot to everyone for their help!

Notes for Meeting Held on April 7th, 2009

After some delay, here is a summary of the meeting held on April 7th, 2009:

1. Legal team presented a few notes on the differences between the Indian and American processes of obtaining NGO status.
2. Educational programme planned for Saturday (April 11th, 2009), details to come after Educational team meets.
3. Vocational training leads have to be followed up on.
4. Data entry is still on hold, we need to find someone to take charge of it.
5. Planning on a General Body meeting sometime next week.
6. The Educational Committee now consists of:
• Bhavya
• Nithya
• Nithya Naram
• Sahithi
• Vishnupriya
• Pranusha
• Saikiran

Educational Programme - Day 4

Today we held the fourth day of our ongoing educational programme. As Nivedita explained, we wanted to capitalize on the work we had done in our last visit to Ramavaram, where we had the children draw pictures of what they wanted to be when they grew up. We thought this would be a good idea to explain to them what people did in various careers, so as to inspire them to think big and to be positive. Some of the kids drew about doctors, and since most of us are medical students, we thought this would be a good place to start.

The day got off to a good start. One thing I have noticed is that it is taking less and less time to get the children organized into a group and they are more attentive. I chalk this up to the fact that we have been able to come regularly over the past month and the kids are getting more used to the format of our programme. We started off with Dr. Thinesh explaining to the children what doctors do. Our goals here were twofold. One aspect of it was that children are very afraid of doctors, and we wanted to do our best to get rid of this fear so that kids wouldn't be afraid to go to a doctor when they get sick. The second aspect was to raise interest in the profession so that some of them might hope to accomplish it themselves. The kids were very involved in this and they had a lot of fun participating in this programme. Some of them explained to us what we should do to stay healthy and to avoid seeing a doctor.

The highlight of the day, for the kids at least, was a chance to wear a lab coat, pretend to be a doctor, at least for a few minutes, and to listen to heart sounds on a stethoscope. This was a wonderful idea by Dr. Thinesh and they kids had a lot of fun learning how to pronounce 'stethoscope' (which was quite a challenge) and using it to listen to the heart sounds of me and Nivedita. We had them learn that the sounds came from the heart, and where the heart was in the body. The kids were very excited about this - many of them wanted to try it for a second time. I had a lot of fun teaching the kids and they loved being called 'Dr.'

After some of the kids tried auscultating, we had them all sit back down again for the second part of our programme. Nazneen and Vandhana did a teamworking lesson with all the kids. We handed each of the kids a small piece of straw from a broom. We discussed with them how when the sticks are held separately, they are quickly broken; but when combined together, they become impossible to break. Nazneen told them a wonderful story to accompany this about teamwork and we had one of the children stand up afterwards to explain what he had learned to the rest of the group. It was wonderful to hear their ideas about how to help people. Some of the children volunteered that it was important to give water to the thirsty, help people who got injured, and to help blind people cross the street.

This concluded our programme for the day. The children who didn't get a chance to auscultate did so after we had finished; and others got a chance to hit the cricket ball. The emphasis for today's programme was on positive thinking, health education, and teamwork. We really hope that some of the kids were able to gain something in that direction.

Thanks a lot to everyone for coming out and participating with the programme, and we hope to follow up with another day next week!

Click here to view the rest of the photos from this event.

On another note, this blog has now been in existence for over a year! Thanks to its many authors for contributing to it and keeping it up to date - and with putting up with my constant pestering.

On yet another note - thanks to the 400 people who've joined our facebook group!

Upcoming Events: Educational Programme, Day 4

Tomorrow we'll be going to Ramavaram for Day 4 of our Educational Programme. As a continuation of last week's "What do you want to be when you grow up?" we will be starting a weekly discussion of different professions. Tomorrow we will be starting with Medicine. We will be discussing what doctors do, why they are important, and what it takes to become one. We will have a couple of SI members who are doctors talk about what they do.

Next we will have a team building activity in which we will discuss how an individual stick can easily be broken but a bundle of sticks cannot be broken, even with great force. We hope to convey that "united we stand, divided we fall."

Finally, tomorrow's health lesson will involve a discussion of disease transmission. We will teach basic etiquette such as covering the mouth when coughing or sneezing, washing hands more often when ill, and not sharing towels and handkerchiefs.

We hope that this week's activity will be as successful as those of previous weeks. If you would like to come out or have ideas for future activities, please let us know!

Lesson Planning: Our Objectives

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Handwashing Review at Ramavaram

Another clip from last Saturday's (April 4th, 2009) visit to Ramavaram. In this visit, we went over the technique of handwashing with the children of Ramavaram that we first taught on the first day of our educational programme.

Toothbrushing Lessons at Ramavaram

A small movie clip from our trip on April 4th, 2009. One of the girls at Ramavaram, just taught by Vandhana, explains to the rest of the group how to brush our teeth. After this, we gave each of the kids a toothbrush to help reinforce the lesson.

Saturday evening at Ramavaram

Saturday saw the activities of the third visit to Ramavaram, as a part of the educational program for children. Crayons to colour what’s on their mind, and cricket to bring alive the playing field-the kids kept us on our toes for all the two hours that we spent with them.

The objective was to get some creative juices flowing. So the kids were asked to draw what they wanted to be when they grew up. From policemen to flowers and mountains, the colouring activity brought out some very fascinating ideas of job opportunities. Vandana, Mounica and Saikiran seemed extremely happy with the results of their respective groups.

Cricket and hyperactive young lads kept Safwan and Arjun on their toes. Meanwhile there was another train of kids who were enjoying their games with Basera, Pavitra, Samar, Apoorva, Krishnaja , Amrutha and Pranusha (who joined us for the first time). Then there were photo sessions with Aneesha and some camera-savy kids.

This was followed by a round of discussion with the kids, where they came forward and let us know what they had learned from the activities of the day. A review of hygiene lessons quickly tailed by a briefing on oral hygiene (by Vandana), brought the visit to an end.

Toothbrushes for all the kids who made the activity a success, brought smiles to everyone who came together for day three of the educational program.

Click here to view the photos from this event.

"When I Grow Up..."

Here are some of the drawings made by the children of Ramavaram from our April 4th, 2009 trip. Rifa will be posting later tonight about the event. We asked the kids to draw pictures of what they would like to be when they grew up. Here are some of our favorites. Click on the pictures to enlarge.