Day 2

The 2nd day was spent discussing with Mr. Ilango what illustrations he wanted in the school building and where he wanted to place these illustrations. We reached the conclusion that the visuals within the school building should correspond to the curriculum of the children to make learning more enjoyable, thus catering to the needs of the students. The exterior of the school building should depict scenes of village life such as wildlife within the community and activities that the villagers do on a daily basis. This will integrate the school into the village community and make the school seem less of a foreign entity to the villagers. Finally we bridged the illustrations to the house system by representing the 4 houses with South Indian flowers. Ilango gathered the entire school together and explained the importance of a house system; that a house system promotes good team morality, good work ethics, and most importantly the responsibility of taking care of the school. From there each house was designated a color (blue, pink, green, yellow) and the team members of the house chose a flower of South India (december flower, rose, jasmine, marigold), leaders for each house, and was given a responsibility (interhouse competition, nurturing school garden, maintanence school environment, upkeeing the library). These responsibilities are rotated on a quarterly basis so that each house has every responsibility. After lunch we then called the leaders of each house and asked them what moral value they would like their house to uphold; Blue chose love, Rose chose discipline, Green chose knowledge, and yellow chose perseverence. After visiting the village we then presented to a private philanthropical group made up motivated high school students who were interested in how the project was planned and executed. We presented a short power point presentation, had them participate in the Global Grabbag and Hunger Banquet Role Card Activities, and discussed with the group their thoughts and ideas about how they can upkeep the changes that have been made. The group seemed very impressed and as a token of their appriciation they gave each member of Team Kuthembakkem a candle made from the orphans they work with. When we returned to the house Katie and Promeeta laborously sketched every detail they wanted portrayed on the external portion of the building and we all were relieved to feel the softness of our cots that night.

Date: Tuesday, July 25th, 2006
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