Includes:
1. TRUWDES Poll [09/22/2010]
2. TRUWDES School Renewal [Madhu] [09/15/2010]
3. TRUWDES Site visit [Madhu] [09/01/2010]
4. Links
TRUWDES Poll:
Do you approve funding for TRUWDES School's budget of Rs. 4,83,695 for 2010-11 academic year (June 2010- May 2011)? The project budget was presented at the chapter on 9/15/10. Budget and other details are uploaded on the project page at
Yes 10 100%
No 0 0
TRUWDES School Renewal [Madhu]
[09/15/2010]
Presentation:
- Site visit report was presented couple of weeks ago
- It is a small residential school in remote part of Tamil Nadu
- School is located in Manjampatti
- Village is pretty remote and is very basic in terms of services
- Village has no direct road - have to hike about 22 kms to get to the village
- Children from 4 hamlets attend this school
- Refer to minutes from couple weeks ago for details about site visit. Madhu yet to write site visit report
- Major occupation - farming, collect forest produce
- Backgroud of TRUWDES:
- Started in 1999
- TRUWDES has been running this as FR school since 2001
- Working in 5 villages since 1999
- Asha SV has been supporting the school since 2007. School has improved over time
- Bhaskar, Asha Chennai volunteer is pretty involved. Madhu is the local steward
- 52 students (33 boys, 19 girls)
- 25 children reside at the school hostel
- Primary education in Tamil medium
- Standard/grade I through VII
- Comprises of one shed - all classes happen in this school
- Education methods - activity based learning methods for the younger children and textbook based learning for older children.
Q: Why 25 students stay here?
A: The rest of the students go back home. These 25 children live a little far away from school and is hard to commute everyday.
- 2 teachres
- 1 physical education trainer visits once a month on pro-bono basis
- Support by a cook and a helper
Q: Where to the 2 teachers live?
A: Until last year they used stay in the school. This year one teacher stays at the school. The other teacher is a woman and she lives nearby
- They are trying to get recognition for the school. This needs them to have a building, etc. So they have been trying to get yearly recognition and this yearly recognition helps them to give TC for students. They have applied for this yearly recognition and they are hoping to get it in Dec.
Q: Are there any govt schools nearby?
A: One school is located 4 hrs away. Another school is located about 3 hrs away - this school was closed when Madhu and Bhanu visited
Q: What happens to children beyond 7th grade?
A: After we started funding them, the school has ben quite stable. Last year they have had 3-4 kids who were in standard/grade 7 have moved to city to work on bonded labour and earn for their parents or help their parents out in regular work. One of these 3-4 kids was a girl and the parents of this girl didn't want her to continue education. This year there are 3-4 girls in standard ??and when Madhu visited the school, he spoke to these girls and also their parents. looks like the girls are quite interested in studying further.
- School also provides mid-day meals, night and weekends food for residential children and teachers
- We also provide uniforms, solar lamp, bed sheets, pillow, stationary, play material
- School is also open on sundays because of residential students
- Extra-cirricularactiviies for children
- Parents supportive and encourage keeping the school open on sundays
- House visits:
- Teachers make weekly visits to children's houses in the village during weekends
- Share the progress of the children and issues they face in school with parents
- This helps in performance of the children, drop-out situation and absenteeism
Q: What is the closest city?
A: Udumalpet
- School details:
- Tamil, English, Science, Social Studies and Maths are taught
- State board syllabus is taught in tamil medium
- Pics shown by Madhu
- 4 teacher training workshops, 3 days each was attended by teachers last year
- Bunch of Govt officials came and visited the schools.
- Last year there was an email from asha-pwg about some grant for 25 solar lamps. Madhu applied for it and the school got 25 lamps which is very actively used by the children
- When Madhu visited the forest office to get Govt permission to hike up to the school, he found couple of lamps in this office. when asked Alex about this he mentioned that they have to give a couple to the officer so that they could carry the rest to the school.
- ASER survey results seemed ok.
- Dilip gave a brief dump about ASER
- This ASER was an informal survey because ASER survey does not happen at such a granular level.
- Showed list of the govt officials who visited the school last year
- After these govt officials visits, things have improved
- School is in urgent need of renovation because the structure is very poor (pic shown). There are lots of rains in this area.
- When we originally started working with TRUWDES, we approved money for building. But they could not build because govt was trying build a Tiger reserve center in that area and wanted to them to move. So the school used the money for regular day-day working. Last year the school figured that govt will not build Tiger reserve, so they could actually build here. Last year we approved money for renovaton. They started working on a new construction in a near by area.
Problems with the school:
- Teachers retention problem. Last year they tried year end incentive which worked because last year stayed till end of the year.
- Lack of clean drinking water. This is a serious problem - see Madhu's site visit. Madhu is looking at low cost solution for this.
- 2010-11 budget presented - almost the same as last year.
- Water filtration: Sheba, an innovative, low cost household filter was designed and Sheba folks wanted to work with someone for prototyping. Madhu is working with the Sheba folks.
TRUWDES Site Visit Minutes: [Madhu]
[09/01/2010]
- Project is located in Manjampatti near Munnar hills
- getting to Manjampatti is quite hard and adventurous - 3hrs of bus ride, 45 mins by car, 5 hours of very scenic hiking (22 kms) which includes crossing the river.
- Have to get permission from forest ranger to do this hike. Restricted hours of hiking because of danger of wild life.
- Unfortunately Madhu and Bhanu did not run into any wild animals
- They passed 2 govt schools. one of which was closed. Another was open.
- The nearby village did not have a functional school but they have a bio-energy plant which was put to good use by the local people.
- The school is quite basic. Has a single room made with mud walls and tin roof. Rains cause a lot of trouble for the school structure.
- School serves as a hostel for some children. No clue how they manage when it rains
- Last 2 teachers used to stay there.
- Cook lives in the school
- Stream runs in front of the school. The stream water is used by the school.
- The school provides mid-day meals
- The learning levels were quite good inspite of the school attrition and how remote the school and the village is.
- Medium of instruction is tamil
- Children could read and write in english although not very proficient
Q: What is the age group of children?
A: till class 7 is taught here
- Teachers - one teacher was well qualified (infact over-qualified). She had a BCA degree and she seemed to have a good rapport with the children
- All class students in one small room.
- They are wearing uniform in the pictures
- Spider story - all of sudden one kid shouted and the reason was the kid found a huge spider. Everyone panicked including Madhu and Bhanu. Finally someone killed or squished the spider and peace returned
- Kids from tribal village show up at the school after 2 months because they help out their parents with farming
- The cook is from a different caste background and in the past some children's parents had issues with their children eating food cooked by this cook. Looks like it is not such a big problem anymore
- On the whole the visit was really good.
Links:
Site visit presentation:
Site visit photos: