Blog

Over the past few years we have had some fantastic interns at Hunar Ghar- from the early days when Rob applied his carpentry skills to help build the first rooms of the school, to becky’s fantastic work with the children and more recently Teddy (an architect that has defined the physical space of Hunar Ghar) and Neha who has started some incredible work with women’s health groups in the village.

Each of these interns has brought something new and valuable to the project but also, I hope, left with an experience that has re-shaped the way they think about education and development.

To date we have been relying on these fantastic people to just come across Educate for Life and Hunar Ghar; which has had its benefits, but also meant we are less accessible than we might be.

Over recent weeks, Ed and I have been working to open up the process of interning with us. Based on our previous experience and understanding of the needs of Hunar Ghar and of interns, we have started compiling some intern packs that pad out the different opportunities available to have a challenging but incredibly rewarding experience working with us and the community.

We;re hoping that in the next couple of weeks we will have some totally revamped intern pages that will get people excited about working with us and engaging with Hunar Ghar and the community in the future.

I’ve had my fingers crossed all week. Why? Because I was hoping that Wolfgang Scheffler would come to Hunar Ghar to advise us on our solar cookers.   And it turns out it was worth it! Along with Stephen from the Global Hospital, he Heike and the rest of his sun-tracking gang came yesterday. We identified where to put up to 4 solar reflectors for cooking. We’ll start with two, and then we can expand to four later.

Solar cooking is really important to us for several reasons. The first is that in sunny Rajasthan it is a limitless source of free energy. Secondly, we normally cook on wood and deforestation is becoming a bit of a problem here. We’ll burn hundreds less trees over the coming decade as a result of having solar reflectors. Third, it helps in the definition of our intention to try and innovate in rural development using the most sustainable methods available, as well as acting to inspire all our students and potentially community with solar energy and make it seem that solar cooking is the norm, not more environmentally degrading alternatives.

So what’s the timeline for this excitement? We’ll ask Teddy to map the area where we plan to put the reflectors when he comes in March. This map will be sent to Heike and Wolfgang, and they’ll advise in where to order appropriate reflectors from as well as where to put the foundations for the reflectors in. The reflectors will then be made to order in Maharastra, sent here, and hopefully we’ll be cooking using sunlight by the end of the summer (although that is just me guessing, I have no idea how long it will take for them to make and send the order).

The man himself, pretending to dance like and Iberian

No solar reflectors …

… an artist’s impression of what Hunar Ghar will look like with Scheffler solar reflectors.

Yesterday Deepak, Neha and I had a bit of a brilliant day. In the morning we went up to see Stephen, an old friend who works at the Global Hospital in Mount Abu. Global Hospital is run by the Brahma Kumaris, and is a very high quality charity orientated hospital. He’d set up a meeting between us and Dr. Pratap, who is responsible for the hospital’s activities in the surrounding communities. Neha and Deepak had met with him before, and Neha had written a fab proposal for him about a partnership between the hospital, Educate for Life, and the Bakhel community, and we’d gone to discuss next steps.

The long and short of it is that the three stake holders will be forming a partnership. The Global Hospital, in collaboration with RNT hospital in Udaipur which specialises in community health, will be pre-testing, intervening and post-testing consistently and iteratively on 5 health issues: diarrhea, immunisation, malnutrition, respiratory diseases and anaemia. They will also provide basic health training to all our teachers to help them act people who can flag up people in the community who potentially need support in these areas. I also intend to talk to the local government health workers and have them receive this training too, so we can help them have more ongoing training and support and perform their work to a higher quality, as well as build them into our team and connection with the hospitals.

In the afternoon we went to see Heike and Wolfgang of Solare Brucke. Wolfgang developed the Sheffler reflector (his surname is Scheffler) , an efficient parabolic reflectic disc and sun tracking system used for capturing solar heat energy. We’ve been wanting to have a solar cooker at Hunar Ghar for years, since it’s beginning 5 years ago, but they are hard to comeby and organise for a cooking capacity of 150 students. But if you want to be able to cook for a lot of people, Wolfgang and Heike are your people; we met them in Abu Road on one of their current projects – construction of a 1Mega Watt solar power plant which will provide all energy needs for a community of around 15,000 people. They have already installed a solar kitchen that cooks for up to 30,000 people a day.

Hunar Ghar is small fry in comparison, but it’s the beginning of a larger network of developmental initiatives and intentions.  We discussed our need and we’ve invited them to Hunar Ghar tomorrow to come and check out our setup and how to go about installing the dishes.

Deepak reflected in a small solar cooker.

Fixtures ready for the solar dishes to be attached

Deepak in front of a Sheffler reflector

Yesterday Deepak and I met with RBKS to discuss pending work and future plans. It’s been 5 years that we’ve been working together now, and it was enjoyable for me to reflect a little on how things have changed over that time. We agreed on several new systems of work, including the creation of a Hunar Ghar operations manual which will be a master reference for both RBKS and Educate for Life in the running of Hunar Ghar; this will greatly improve the efficiency of our work and provide a clear channel for communicating responsibilities to each other.

We also discussed the continued capacity building of our teachers and using Hunar Ghar as a means of communicating quality education ideas back up the heirarchy and into government schemes: Typically we have to do follow the government requirements for running a school, at the risk of not being classified as a school if we don’t do this. But it is abundantly clear to everyone who see’s it that Hunar Ghar is the highest quality school in the area, and we achieve a teacher and student attendance and education level far higher than government schools. We are keen to share what we have learned in how to do this with other educators to help develop other non-Hunar Ghar schools.

Other points covered included the appointment of two new qualified teachers (to satisfy government requirements) and the appointment of a school coordinator to free Deepak up to expand his work into community and environmental development initiatives beyond Hunar Ghar. We also talked about the potential of expanding Hunar Ghar beyond 5th standard, and the utilisation of our expertise and best practice and dedicated, reliable team at Hunar Ghar to support other small primary schools (balwadis) in the area which consistently collapse or stop after 3 years.

All in all it was a effective meeting with good positive steps put in place for creating a better, stronger Hunar Ghar and improving the working relationship and depth and scope of work done by Educate for Life and RBKS as we move into our next 5 years of Hunar Ghar.

But that was yesterday (and just today I looking in the usual place, there was the case, but the horn itself was missing), today Deepak and I met with Devinder from Kautilya Vikas Sansthan (Kautilya Development Society) whom Deepak has know for a couple of years. Devinder has visited Hunar Ghar a couple of times but this is the first opportunity to meet him. He and KVS also work towards education and communities, as well as a number of other areas. It was a good experience meeting him and learning about their organisation, and discussing how Educate for Life and KVS can practically share their understanding and skills to create better education in each organisation. We agree that our teachers will go for an exposure at their school, and theirs come to us, as a way of cross-seeding our work and creating an initial working relationship with each other. Again, a good, positive meeting with genuine outcomes decided and to be acted upon in the near future. Good stuff.