Workshop Diaries

We have concluded the first phase of our school workshops. We have covered a good range of MCD schools. The two stories shared here are also two first experiences. The first post by Shubham is on the first ever workshop of Manorath. The second post by Gehena is her first workshop.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
By Garima Shukla and Shubham Kalyan Aggarwal

Our first school workshop was conducted on 25th July No. 1 MCD school, Dakshinpuri . It was nice to see months of meetings and hard work finally bearing fruit :). There were indeed a few glitches, but if there is so much learning and fun such hurdles can be easily overcome. Let me take you through the day's events :

The workshop began at 11:00 am when an anxious Manorath team was greeted by an equally anxious student body of the school.

Once the children were seated [with a lot of help from the teachers :)], the skit began. Sakshi, the Madari, enthralled the bunch of young girls with her acts while Habiba amused everyone as the lost Jamura.

Bulbul, Shweta, Harpreet, Ankur and many others later joined in to play their respective characters. The children were in awe, everyone standing, craning their necks, trying to get a glimpse of the show.

The girls from classes 4 and 5 were however seated on the 1st floor, and were kept busy by Smita, Bhavay and myself. They sang and talked about their future.

And just to make sure that amidst all the fun we dont lose track of the real idea, it was important that the children be made aware of their rights and hence the CRY anthem followed the skit.

Then started the painting competition. The children were seated in circles and given colors and a plain white sheet, and they were told to put down there imagination on those sheets, and it was awe inspiring to see the creativity that was unleashed in the school hall. The once blank sheets now had houses, trees, kites, little children, tables, clouds, rivers, mountains, flowers, fruits, even rakhees of different colors. We had a tough time choosing winners.

Once the competition was over to hold those little angels back in the room was another challenge.In a room full of more than 300 ppl and fans not working and monsoon not helping us in any way!!

The workshop ended just on time, by 12:30, parents had lined up to take their children back home, and we couldnt hold them back any further :).

Our work though was far from over, because then came the real deal. We had a one to one discussion with the teachers, which was an eye-opener, helped us assess our campaign and we were able to document important results.

Prize distribution was done the following saturday.

TAIMOOR NAGAR WORKSHOP: AN EXPERIENCE TO TREASURE
By Gehena Chauhan

The day began with haggling over ten rupees with an auto walla in NewFriends Colony market. I ended up misplacing my phone in the sameauto. (Should have given him that tenner !!) We proceeded to theTaimoor School in a rickety rickshaw which was on the verge of collapsing due to two very “healthy” Indian girls.Amongst the backdrop of humming noises emitting from the variousclassrooms, the survey sheets, pens and crayons were quicklydistributed amongst all twelve of us Manorath volunteers. We were amix of both experienced volunteers and amateurs, including some likeme who had recently joined and had no clue of what to expect from ourfirst workshop.Nervous and confused with trickles of sweat on my brow, I enteredThird B. Excited eyes peeped out at us as we gave them instructions.To be honest the other more confident, experienced volunteer did that while I merely nodded, smiled and after distributing crayons noddedand smiled a bit more, trying to look important.Soon enough I was assigned a section of my own to interact with - Third A. Asking the girls to draw anything that came to their mind, I watched with envy as they filled their blank sheets with brown mountains, yellow smiling suns , huts, matchstick figures, bluerivers, Indian flags, traffic lights, grapes and mangoes. Being an ardent mango lover, the latter caused my stomach to misbehave and makesome very aggressive audible noises. “Ma’am May I go to the bathroom?” I looked up from my survey sheets,and saw one tiny girl who was clutching her stomach. I clucked sympathetically and gave her my “ever so important” permission. Not even sixty seconds had passed when another voice pitched in “Ma’am mayI go to the bathroom ” I smiled and could see myself years back doing the very same thing. Needing a friend…everywhere. Like most other girls their age, these girls simply loved to talk. I took full advantage of this and tried needling them with questions about their teachers, parents and siblings.I was amused to see some girls trying to paint a rosy, picture -“the food is very nice, the teachers are very good with us”. Whereas others would instantaneously spill the beans and complain-“No, the food is not nice and I was hit by the teacher.”A gang of concerned girls stumped a volunteer ten years elder to them“Bhaiya what do you want to be when you grow up?”. Another was advised a career “Didi, you are very pretty. Please join Bollywood ”. Onevolunteer felt appreciated when he was declared the class’s favourite teacher only to realize that they were doing that to every volunteerthat day. Kids nowadays are either getting older too fast or maybe our generation is getting too slow.At the back of their drawing sheets, the children were asked to write their name, Father’s name and his occupation. This one girl told me that she did not know her father’s occupation. When asked why, shetold me that her father had expired and in a matter-of-fact manner added that even her partner had lost her father. On the other hand, I later found out how a girl in ‘fifth standard’ burst out in tears at the mention of her late father.This incident taught me that maturity is irrespective of age.When I had selected the three best drawings I went to the class anddistributed them. Each girl looked at me with hopeful eyes, expecting me to say her name. Since there were only three prizes, I had to givethe rest verbal consolation as to how each drawing was very specialand each of them were winners. One volunteer shared with me that a teacher had suggested to him that we should be distributing prizes to all the children.One face lingered in my memory long after the workshop. One girl asked me if she could write her mother’s name as she only knew her spelling. But she got stuck on her occupation. I asked her politely if she was a housewife. “No”, she replied, “My mother has been sick for many years. So what is her occupation?” Coincidentally she had come First. I tried to imagine the moment when this talented, soft spoken girl would have shown her prize to her mother. As for my prize, I didn’t get a pencil box or a certificate but what I got was a snapshot of smiling faces and lingering memories and I knewI wouldn’t have missed the Taimoor Nagar school visit for the world.The workshop wrapped up with a few of us going back to New Friends Colony trying to find my phone and then celebrating the lost phone atAl Bakes’ with shvarmas and mayonnaise .

This article was compiled taking help from the experiences shared by fellow volunteers-Archana, Harpreet, Ashutosh, Mridul, Gaurav, Gaurab, Tullika, Niyati, Subhash, Menakshi, AND Abhilasha.

I’d like to thank my best friend Anchal and her mother for their invaluable suggestions.