Kuthambakam - Role Model Village In India

Day 5

kuthambakam — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 05:00:35 +0000

The day started extremely early since Promeeta and Katie were gung-ho on finishing the artistic aspects of the project. While the artists finished full scale drawings for the exterior and made additional touches to the columns Aditya, Amrita, and the IIT boys helped us put up the posters for the 1st-3rd grade building. Unfortuantely, regular scotch tape was inadequete for the walls so we consulted Ilango who said he would put permanant frames inside the building and have the posters rotated based on the needs of the teachers. At 11 the adult forum began, lead by Shrutika, as an outlet for the parents to voice their needs and opinions about the school curriculum and their ideas about the future. Ilango used this as an opportunity to stress the need of a high school and by the end of the meeting all the adults who attended the forum promised that they would help achieve the goal of a high school within the village community. Meanwhille, at 10:30 the Reuturs TV crew arrived to interview the group about our efforts in Kuthembakkem. Both events ended by 1:30 so we quickly ate lunch in order to organize the talent show taking place at 2. Ilango had a tent constructed to roof the talent show with a full scale backdrop! All the grades, 200 students, sat on the floor while the teachers sat on chairs behind and we had the priviledge of sitting on the sides to watch the event. The team was especially impressed by the topics of the students who made speeches about civic topics, thus giving the students an opportunity to address the entire student body. There were other various events that the team enjoyed immensely such as the girls who sang village songs and the students that danced to tamil songs. Katie and Amrita enjoyed the boys performance so much that as a grand finale they decided to jump in with the boys! After the students performed Team Kuthembakkem demonstrated their own talents: Amrita tap danced; Katie and Shrutika sang, Adi played the drums, and Venkat sang. When the talent show was complete it finally dawned on us that the project was coming to an end. It was so moving when Ilango ended the occasion with concluding words and presented a shawl and house decoration to Mr. and Mrs. Sankar. One of the teachers spoke eloquently about how we had lived up to the words of Robert Frost since we continued on for our cause to help even though there were “miles to go before we sleep”. Ilango presented each member of the team a potpouri case made by the villagers that used indigenous plants and was crafted to look artistic. We were impressed by the high quality of work and even remarked that it was of a caliber of Potterybarn!! On the way to the van the children waved out and exclaimed goodbye, but hopefully its only the beginning of a long relationship with the community. We have come to understand the character of the villagers and admire their idealism and perseverence for a better way of life. Moreover, every team member remarked how inspirational the smiles on their faces are to us. We hope to live up to the words of Mahatma Gandhi and ensure these smiles are permanent; its the least we could do for children who easilly cause our own faces to smile.

Lastly we’d like to conclude by thanking all the supporters of this project once again. Thank you for your support and the perspective you have provided to this project, which have been essential to making this project succesful.

Day 4

kuthambakam — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 05:00:41 +0000

Well we’re almost wrapping up our adventure here at Kuthembakkem but we have a feeling tomorrow’s final day will be nothing short of a grand finale! Things have been going exceedingly well and we are all extremely happy with the results thus far. After an intense night of drawing on behalf of the residental arists we headed off bright and early to Kuthembakkem with certain goals in mind. Katie and Promeeta intended to draw the sketches of the rural development scene on the elementary school building but it unfortunately had not been painted over yet (since the villagers had painted the outside of the middle school building last night). Instead, they decided to have the 1st-3rd graders put their thumbprints around the chalkboards for each grade and the full handprints of the 4th-6th graders inside the middle school building. The project was widely supported by the rest of the community; for example the teachers and local painters gave their full support by helping paint the hands of the children and helping the children place their painted hands on the wall and some of the 8th grade boys washed the hands off of the childrens hands after they had finished. Meanwhille the rest of the team was actively planning the sports day that would begin at 1:30 this afternoon. First we had to sort through the prizes and determine which would be appropriate for the occasion. Of course there was some side-bar horsing around (such as playing with a small watergun…) but overall we managed to determine the three rounds of the sports day, 100 meter race; relay race; and tug of war, and sorted through all the prizes. Some of the village women who were helping at the Panchayat office were amused by the different prizes and enjoyed understanding how they worked (such as mechanical walking toys, rubix cubes). After lunch we then broke off into 3 groups: Tuhin working on the computer to catelouge the books, Katie and Pro getting the handprints of the Team;Teachers; and Ilango, and the rest of the team working on the sports day. It was fairly amusing since the students now began to ask members of the team for our autographs. We felt very similar to celebrities when a group of children rushed up with pads of paper and pens for us to sign! Anyways, we got the activities together and sent for the students to begin the sports day by 2 o’clock. We managed to organize the students by their houses and had flags provided by Ilango for the houses to sit behind while they watched their house students performed. The relay races were also enjoyable but the concept of a relay race had to be explained to the children. The final event, tug or war, gained a GREAT deal of enthusiasm from the kids but unfortunately as soon as the teams began they tore the rope with their enthusiasm!!! The sports day was briefly interrupted by a religious procession but otherwise went off smoothly. We finally announced the winner of the sports day (green house) and awarded small prizes to the 1st place winners of each event. At this point the students were extremely curious about what the prizes were and wanted to see them so they eagerly crowded around us. Some of the prizes required a small explanation (the small water gun for example) but the children wanted to understand their purpose and were overjoyed to recieve them.

Tomorrow we have numerous items on the agenda. We first plan on holding a talent show for the children in different categories such as folk singing and dancing. Katie and Promeeta are going to finish planning the sketches inside the schools and coordinating with the local artist what they want on the outside of the building. Tuhin will hopefully finish the library system if all goes well but at least explain to the teachers the process to catelouge and laminate the books. The most exciting piece of information that we learned today is that one, if not two, TV channels are going to come visit the village to view the changes and the talent show. ZTV will definetely be coming and Reuters might air footage that they take tomorrow. Hence, members of the team that were intending to perform a small talent for the show tomorrow have a great deal of additional pressure put on their shoulders. Although we are looking foreward to having the finishing touches made to conclude our project, we are somewaht wistful that all our efforts are coming to an end shortly. It has been a moving experience that none of us could have ever even envisioned in our lives. Just knowing that the smiles of the village children have the potential to be permanent fixtures in their lives from a small contribution made on our part is extremely rewarding, and the village children have no idea how much of an impression they have made on our lives. With any luck we will have the photos to show you by tomorrow so that you can personally experience the life of the village. Thank you again for your support!

Day 3

kuthambakam — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 05:00:40 +0000

Day 3 began with another discussion with Ilango and the 7 IIT boys. We were delighted that Ilango (the Panchayat Leader) had brought his daughter along to help in translating for us. Katie and Promeeta spent the morning trying to find out what the flowers looked like and then sketched the four house flowers on four columns of the middle school. The rest of the team organized a preliminary round of the Sports Day the team was organizing for tomorrow in which over a hundred children participated. Four members of the team along with four translators went to the school and had the teams select 6 members from each grade. After lunch the books arrived so Tuhin and the IIT boys sorted through all the books and organized them into the various Dewey Decimal System categories. Katie and Promeeta finished painting in the flowers on the wall and the rest of the team organized the kids to participate in “the heats” after they had finished school. The children were extremely excited to run in a test 100 meter dash, even though to our foreign ideals the prospect of sprinting barefoot on hot asphalt was not extremely appealing. Nonetheless, the children cheered on their peers and even the teachers were enthusiastic about the event. The afternoon was concluded by a good portion of Team Kuthembakkem (Tuhin, Venkat, Adhitya, and Amrita) against Team IIT racing against one another. Unfortunately, Team Kuthembakkem was greatly put to shame when we realized one of the runners was Secretary of Sports at IIT and was hence a running MACHINE. Everyone left the village in high spirits but there were tell–tale signs of exhaustion from all members of the team. Katie and Promeeta are delighted to spend yet another night sketching illustrations till 3 o’clock in the morning, but with the additional bonus of coloring in every sketch so that the village artist understands exactly what to paint on the walls of the building. A few other members of the team are organizing the sports day event which is being held tomorrow and the rest are anxious to catalouge the books in the new library. The days have gone by so fast but each has been extremely meaningful to all members of the group. We look foreward to our last few days in the village and anticipate great things in the horizon of our village.

Day 2

kuthambakam — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 05:00:29 +0000

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.

Day Une!!!!!!!!!!!

kuthambakam — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 05:00:34 +0000

Greetings All!

Today we set off on the first day of our adventure. We first met with the Panchayat (village community) leader who explained the philosophies of a self sustaining village, the history of what he has achieved, and how the government works. He concluded by voicing his hope that this project would bring a “permanent smile to the poor”, as quoted by Gandhim and that we would be successful in our venture. Afterwards we visited the middle school that had recieved our funds and in four days time had , established false ceiling for the three fans, painted the building, and overall had brought a homely atmosphere to the once desolate building. From there, we visted the elementary school where they had tiled and painted the building from the additional funds. We then had the opportunity to visit the studenst who had packed into one building due to construction. Everyone was really happy to see us, and especially loved having their photo digitally taken. One girl was particularly fond of Promeeta, and everyone was thrilled to paint Katie brown when they would see her tomorrow. We were impressed with their English prowess (demonstrated by reading Swami Vivekananda’s speech on religion) and moreover we were thrilled to be recieved so warmly by the village children. They had high aspirations for their futures and mentioned hopes of being police officers and doctors. We quickly shoved in lunch so that way we could discuss with the teachers of the village their hopes for the project and meet a middle ground as for the coming events of the week. Amrita also presented the gently used posters she had collected which they were excited about. The teachers liked the concept of creating a house system to promote school spirit and were enthusiastic about painting the building. Afterwards the team split with Promeeta and Katie discussing the artistic details with the village artist while the rest of the team met with mothers of the community who were interested in bringing change to the school. Katie and Promeeta decided to ask the children tomorrow what they hope to see on their school walls and from there they would scetch these animals so the village artist could paint it in. From there Katie and Promeeta would paint a mural on the outside of the building and the bottom border of the school would be lined by handprints of all the students in the school. The bottom line of the discussion with the mothers of the village was that they were very specific about what changes they wanted to see in their children’s education and were keen to improve the already rising standards of education. One mother mentioned that her daughter was bragging to her brother, who goes to a local convent school, that her school was much better then his and that her school was gettting a library built and having murals painted. Overall the day ended with high hopes of tomorrow and we were thrilled with their first impression of the village.