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Update: the ‘before’ shot isn’t quite as dynamic(!) :

The trip to Hunar Ghar was good. It is the Dipawali holidays so no kids around, so it was a good opportunity to check out the advances in the infrastructure and to have ample time to go and visit each of the teachers at their homes.

In terms of infrastructure, we now have a bunch more stairways, a complete boundary (which we’ve been fighting for for 2 years!) which has bamboo and trees planted around it, which are being properly watered under the supervision of Gopal, new small windows fixed in old rooms a la Teddy’s style, people preparing to buy materials and prepare for building next year’s rooms, a gate built and being installed so we’ll finally be rid of cows and sheep, so we can start some vegetable gardens and grow even more trees, a working rainwater harvesting system with 4 big tanks, which are having covers installed at the moment too, a new well to be dug soon (Bhuriya is negotiating the use of land underneath the yellow room for it), proper cupboards with clear perspex doors in every classroom, and much more besides.

We’re also working a lot on improving the quality of the education, in which Deepak and Ina are starting to make head-way, although that still has much further to go. At the moment we’re putting together activity books that relate to each of the government set learning requirements for each class. So for everything the children should be learning, there will be an accompanying 2 -4 activities for teaching it, to keep it interesting and stimulating for the children and help the teachers build up their repertoire of skills, with which they can feel more comfortable in the job, and use to build new ideas and activities. Although we are basing the current syllabus on the government one, and being a bit more subject focussed in doing this, we certainly don’t want the learning to stop at that. With attention, this will just provide us with a stepping stone to move on to where we want the learning at Hunar Ghar to be, community-relevant and project based.

We’re also trying to start the vocational training for older children, whom currently come to Hunar Ghar but are probably going to drop out very soon if we don’t do something else for them – kids that have a ‘school learning age’ of say 9, primary school, but are 13, 14 ,15 years old, basically young adults. There could be in-house training from a resident expert, or we can send children for apprenticeship, or both. That’s going to be tough to sort out, but very good if we can. We want to have a workshop at the heart of Hunar Ghar (ie physically in the middle of the school). These children can learn there, and we’ll pay them for it if we set up an arrangement where they then work for x number of years for Hunar Ghar, teaching other children skills and us using their skills, ie maybe have an in-house toy maker, furniture maker, tailor etc. It’s not a long term thing for all the children – we’d never be able to find jobs for them all at Hunar Ghar! – but it is the beginnings of not only creating opportunity for these children, but showing that Hunar Ghar is more than just a school-type learning environment, and that there are other options for children within and outside the community, which Hunar Ghar can help generate.

These children wouldn’t stop learning other ‘school skills’ though. After all, to run a good business you need to learn how to balance accounts, make projections, handle budgets, write letters, keep a bank account etc etc, and you might need to learn whether your raw products are sustainable sourced, or natural, or how they are produced etc, so other non language/maths learning also naturally comes in. In fact, this might be a great way to really force learning at Hunar Ghar more towards project-based learning, simply by having a learning environment there which no-one approaches with the preconception of being a classroom. Without that stigma, we might be able to go a lot, lot further.

This morning I pus a few of the finishing touches to our Hunar Ghar booklet, that should go to print this afternoon. It’s looking pretty good, with full double page full colour photos over laid with information about our vision, activities and commitments over the coming 5 years. Once it is finished I’ll upload a .pdf and put in our docs section. I imagine most of our readers will have to think of it just as a pretty picture book; it’s written in Hindi.

The book is part of our new focus on sharing greater communication and clarity of commitments with the community so we’ll be sharing a copy with every family in the village. The extras can be shared with external people that take an interest in Hunar Ghar. Those sorts of people are mounting in their numbers and I think it is pretty tring for Sharmaji to keep explaining about Hunar Ghar.