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I just got a great email from a Miss Seleema Grewal, younger sister of Jas, Educate for Life trustee. Unbeknownst to me Seleena has been busy at school with her year 7 class, telling everyone about Educate for Life, having votes on different fundraising ideas and events such as a summer sports tournament, and garnering support to have Educate for Life selected as school charity for the next academic year. Brilliant stuff!

They recently had a homework to make Educate for Life posters. Here’s Seleena’s poster:

I finaly find some time to write about the 2 weeks I spent a Hunar Ghar at the begining of march. I was so glad to see again the people that welcomes me some years ago when I arrived to built with them the extension of the school… : smiling faces; kids yelling my name from very far in the landscape; or villagers coming to me with the local namaste ( ramram) ( hello), all those tiny things that are so important in those areas and when you come back for the second time 2 years after… I felt very good and confortable : unhabitants and I recognize mutualy each other from close, from far, after some time… whatever the « how », there is still this feeling of respect, untouched, between them and I that I could imediatly feel when I arrived at Mandwa or Bakel.

The 2 weeks passed very fast for sure. But we managed to plan some work for the coming months with Buriah, Gopal and Deepak, such :

• finish the extension of the interns’accommodation ( still need to build the bathroom and the kitchen );

• define the platform where we gonna set up the solar reflector for the solar cooking;

• approve the location of the 2 independant stairs ( one that gives an access to the learning center – yellow room – and another one that gives an access to the workshop – red room – );

• recover the school latrines with a proper roof;

• Fix the water tanks to make them more waterproof ( 2 of them are suspected to leave the water going away because of some cracks ! );

• and some other smaller things ( changed some things there, fixed some cracks here,… )

On the top of that, spending some times with villagers was also very important in order to keep strong the relation we have with all of them. I would like to specialy thanks Buriah and his family who welcome me for several nights and several diners in their humble house…

To conclude, I would like to say that the school is going well in an architectural point of view : what we build 2 years ago is still there and very healthy ! The bamboo roof structure of the 3 classrooms is still as strong as at the begining; walls seem passing the time without probem; all the system of stairways and circulation is now completely improved and the water harvesting system fully works in rainy time…

Only good news so far, and so much more for the future of Hunar Ghar…

Of course I met some new people and among them Neha, this wonderfull intern who makes an amazing work with the women of the villages around the school.

All of those extarordinary local people, all of those buildings, all of those situations, all of those cooperations, and of course all the teachers, Deepak, Ed and Ash, the trutees, and all the students make Hunar Ghar everyday….

teddy

A chula is the traditional wood burning fires that everyone in Bakhel cooks on. Wood and dried corn husks are pretty much the only fuel people in the village can afford, because it costs only time. However, homes can get pretty smoky which isn’t great for the lungs and sometimes respiratory disease develop.

There is a charity in Udaipur called Rajpurohit Seva Sansthan who install smokeless chulas. this way the women can keep using the same fuel but it will be better for their health, and the energy transfer from wood to food is more efficient too, saving them valuable time and effort in wood collection. Neha as been talking with them to come and train some people in Bakehl to be able to install these chulas. they seem really well organised, so we’re hoping to be able to do this quite soon.

It’s all just a part of another way of running schools as hubs of village development, so they can be more useful to more people in more direct terms.

Smokeless chula being installed (stock photo from Rajpurohit Seva Sansthan)

Smokeless (or perhaps ‘less-smoke’ is more accurate) chula in action (another stock photo from Rajpurohit Seva Sansthan)

It being the first of April, we’ve just submitted our budget for the year to RBKS. Along with the usual 10% increase in the salary of all staff, and an increase in other areas to account for another 30 children who will join us, there are a few other interesting things budgeted for as well…

this year we’ve factored in for a well, solar cookers and solar panels. This means that in 12 months we should be water and energy independent. It’s a pretty major step and allows us to do a lot more with the children, such as more farming and having access to the wealth of information that is the internet.

It’s also interesting to note what isn’t accounted for. This includes lots of work that we hope to do with the community this year. It’s not budgeted for as we hope that it will all be taken care of by Hao Banao, a community organisation started by Hunar Ghar coordinators Deepak and Gopal. This would also be a major step in the quality democratisation of  control of works done at and by Hunar Ghar.

In all, the budget is around £ 30,000 this year, not a huge amount but also a lot more than the £ 5000 that we spent the first year. We think that it’s work every penny of the approximate £ 200 investment per person per year (children and teachers alike) when we see the fantastic things they are doing with their lives as a consequence of it.

You can download a pdf of our budget here: EFL Hunar Ghar Budget 2012 2013

Every two weeks Neha must submit a report to Indicorps of what she’s been up to and what she’s been thinking over that time. It’s a great documentation process and excellent as a medium of clearly understanding what she’s been doing and what she’s planning next. I’m going to start blogging extracts of these posts to document online the kind of experience she’s had.

Here’s what she wrote about the first two days of March:

3/1 and 3/2 were the kids last two days at school before Holi vacation. I spent some time with Gopal on 3/1 teaching the kids about voting and we had them vote on which foods they wanted to make to celebrate Holi. Explaining that you could only vote for one thing took a while, but the kids understood and we ended up deciding on a menu of pakoras + gilabi, which was not the healthiest thing to eat, but it was a holiday! It was also a great day at home. I showed Gulab how the tippy-tap would work with the water bottle, and he immediately ran and built it for our house. I’m continuously thrilled and touched by Gulab’s excitement and fervor for learning new things…he just has something in him that really drives him to try new stuff. I wonder where it comes from, and hope its something he/I can instill in other children as well. On 3/2 the whole staff and students all teamed together to make the pakoras. Celebrations at Hunar Ghar are always really successful, and seeing the staff so motivated always reminds me that it is possible for them to be really interested in doing something. Most of the staff was occupied in the kitchen, so I did my class with the third graders about plastic and saving water. I used my computer to show pictures of the ocean and lakes and to do some visualizations about how much water there is in the world. I think using the computer is a good idea, but I have to be careful and not become dependent on it. In the afternoon I had another English lesson with Bhavri, who I hadn’t been able to find in a few days, and I taught her how to use the English-Hindi dictionary. Its always nice to spend time with her, but her exams are coming up so soon and I have no idea if she knows enough English to pass.