Sangam India: Blog: Educational Programme, 13th June, 2009

Today’s educational programme, even with only a handful of children and just a few SI volunteers, turned out to be one of the most successful and rewarding days yet. Most of the children have not yet returned from trips to their native places for holidays, so it was an excellent opportunity to give the children one-on-one attention.

Today’s activity was a simple one, using picture books with moral stories, such as The Fox and the Grapes, The Dog and the Bone, and other similar stories. Pamela started by reading about five short stories to the children, after which we asked the children to tell us the stories using just the pictures.

All of the youngsters basked in the glow of our attention, praise, and affection. It was a truly heartwarming experience to see how happy they were just to have us spend time and give them our attention. After the main storytelling session, some of the children spent one-on-one time with us, reading to us, with some prompting and assistance. A couple of the children read in English, but with almost no comprehension of what they were reading. Although they started to lose attention after a little while, all of us truly felt a connection with the children today. We did not lose even a single child – all of them stayed from beginning to end. This was truly a success for us, a first-time event. The children ran after us as we left, asking us to promise to come back next week.

We are hoping to find good ways to incorporate the stories into a larger scheme of activities that will engage the children and harness their creativity. As always, please let us know if you have ideas on how to do this.

Another development is that several of the secondary school children have approached us for assistance with school fees. We will be paying them next week, after meeting with all of the children and their parents. Each child has to pay Rs. 525 (approx. $11) for the year. If you’re interested in sponsoring a child, please let us know in the next couple of days. We will provide an update as soon as we find out more details.