This is the article I wrote for an expat group here in Hyderabad. It is long, but comprehensive!
Naga’s little toddler head bob bob bobs along when he runs on his thin, dusty legs. He is two and a half feet tall with a crew cut and wide, wild, intelligent eyes. Naga was my first friend in the Mastan Nagar slum. He is independent, climbs like a monkey, and runs fast. I spend too much time chasing him. His mother, Nagama, is always working. Her head is down, over the cooking or over the wash. She never knows where Naga has run to, yet he keeps to an imaginary a fifteen-foot boundary that stretches between his hut, his school, and the flat space in the dirt road in front of the school where his two older brothers play cricket.
I know Naga and three hundred of his fellow slum children through my work with the Rainbow Primary School. This is how our friendship began. This little bit of our story here ends with some lessons learned and ways others can help.
In September 2005, a regal and lovely Hyderabadi named Kalpana introduced herself to me. She had come to know of me through a very small project I conducted at the Madhapur Government School, five minutes from my house in Hy-Tech City. Long ago, Kalpana began working in by gathering children and teaching them under the trees. Now, her volunteer career includes assisting the government in establishing schools in slum areas around Hy-Tech City.
By October 2005, I agreed to take on one of her projects. Mastan Nagar is a slum neighborhood off road number 46 in Jubilee Hills, about ten minutes from Hy-Tech City. The Mastan Nagar inhabitants belong to the “backwards” and “scheduled” castes, including the caste formerly labeled “untouchables,” now called Dalhits. There are Christians and Muslims among the mostly Hindu population along with about a dozen Banjaran and Lombardi tribal families. Most of the fathers work as day-laborers: stone cutters, three-wheeler drivers, and ditch-diggers. Some of the mothers are also day-laborers and others work in houses as maids or cooks. There are some lucky mothers who stay at home with their children. These mothers are endlessly busy with cooking, cleaning, chasing children, and finding additional food and fuel.
There are around 600 children in the neighborhood. A handful of these go to school in far-away government boarding schools for needy children. Some of the older children go to the government school about three miles away in Madhapur (Hy-Tech City). Some of the younger children go private schools close by which cost about 200 rupees a month (about $3 U.S.). About two-dozen children work in tea stalls, in woodshops, or as goatherders. In October 2005, there were three-hundred children, aged three to twelve, who were not going to school at all. They were running wild in the streets.
Kalpana arranged for her government contacts to supply me with a land grant and some funding for a permanent school building. I set up a temporary structure to house the school until our permanent building was constructed. Kalpana trained me on how to work with the government for funding. I started to recruit and train the teachers on child-centered instruction methods modified, of course, to take advantage of the different set of resources found in the slum. We began with thirty students and four teachers. That was when I met Naga. At our first Parents Meeting in late October, the children and parents voted to choose “Rainbow Primary School” as the name of the school. I started posting our funniest or most outrageous experiences on-line at www.rainbowprimaryschool.com.
By the end of November 2005, the streets were quiet. All the kids were in school.
Today, 21 March 2007, was another hot, sultry morning in the temporary preschool room. It has a metal roof with thatch walls and mats on the floor. The children are sitting in a circle with their teacher or coming in to the class. Just like preschool parents all over the world, the parents gently lead them in and then walk away fast-fast in case their little one throws a fit. These children are so tiny for their ages (two to four), but so self-controlled. The big kids in third and fourth standard classes sit outside the preschool, but the little ones never bother them. In the slum, the children partially raise each other while the parents work. Then at night, families sleep all together like puppies in a big pile, as do most all families throughout the developing world. Privacy would be … unsettling.
There are always so many new preschool students as parents migrate in from the countryside for work in the city. Some of these new students are eating chalk because they are hungry. For the thirtieth time that month, I remind myself to reach out to new partner organizations to start a breakfast program for the preschool. Malnutrition is the biggest challenge to their learning. But they are learning.
Marie Montessori started her work in a slum in Rome. It is no wonder hands-on Montessori methods are easy for these preschoolers to understand. Slum children naturally learn through their hands. Sticks, dirt, other children, puppies; the slum children are allowed to play with anything. They get very grubby. Without fail, even during water shortages, the mothers wash the children each morning before school following a strict pan-Indian cultural phenomenon called the “morning purification ritual.” The children are soaped up and scrubbed with a strong neem soap, then rinsed. This is done three times, no less. Coconut oil is a natural defense against lice and fantastic hair conditioner for their thick, gorgeous, porous hair. The oil goes into their hair, and then the hair is brushed or braided into a glossy helmet. By the time the preschoolers get to school, they are dusty again.
Apart from nutrition, the other big challenge is getting these preschool students to relax and develop independent critical thinking skills. The preschoolers are easing into the idea that learning can be fun, but they still want to wait, wait, wait and then repeat or imitate. It gets annoying. But in the slum, there are very immediate dangers and caution is an early lesson every child absorbs. All of the preschoolers have little scars from tumbles and cooking fires. Getting them to relax enough to dance around is a slow process. By second standard, the slum kids have much more confidence. They become wild with happiness to have larger bodies and a great deal of working knowledge of their environment.
This is less true for the girls. The little girls are even more reserved than the boys in preschool and, with a few exceptions, they stay that way. From babies they are treated differently. This is not meant to be unloving. Girls are expected to serve, Stepford wife style, throughout their lives. The condition of these girls reminds me so much of growing up in the pre-women’s liberation era in the American South. In the Mastan Nagar slum, the families never want to give the girls the illusion that they can expect to have help in any way. It would just spoil them. Then the girls would not be ready for the backbreaking work of raising children in poverty. So, showing tenderness to their girl children would only break their hearts later. As the modern world seeps into the slum, the older girls in the Rainbow School talk about careers, not motherhood. It will take a radical step from the girls to continue their education and radical intervention with the parents to help them understand how an educated daughter benefits them. All most parents want from their daughters are tidy huts and a nice bunch of babies. Today, as I look around, the huts are universally neat and tidy, and there are new babies in every other hut.
Raising children here in poverty is terribly hard, but not lonely. It is certainly not as lonely as being a parent in the United States. After school, the children run wherever they wish. Everyone watches and helps using that sixth sense all mothers develop to keep one eye on their washing and one eye on the street full of kids and toddlers. While these parents lack even the most basic information on almost every parenting subject, from health to child development, they do help each other to the best of their abilities. Since most families are recent arrivals from the rural areas, they are cut off from their traditional inter-generational source of parenting advice and support. While this creates immense pressure on new arrivals; friends are made fast. Cardboard huts do make for good neighbors, even though the conditions are rather horrifying for Western parents.
Construction on the new school building begins on Monday. The seven teachers and Usha Rani, our headmistress, will move in sometime in July.
The lessons learned from the experience are:
www.naandi.org has more information.
I am going to import the “Ensuring Children Learn” model used by Naandi back to the United States. Naandi is a profoundly groundbreaking public-private partnership that works more effectively to reform and strengthen government schools than anything else I have come across. As expected, international and in-country donors are flocking to support the Naandi Foudation’s work. These include the Susan and Michael Dell Foundation, J.P. Morgan Stanley, E-Bay India, Mahindra and Mahindra, HDFC, Hindustan Petroleum, Dr. Reddy Laboratories, among hundreds of others.
When I need inspiration, I go to the Rainbow School. When I am cranky, I go to the school. When I am overwhelmed by a challenge, I go to the school. When I want to have a great time with my daughter, I take her to the school. It is my happy place. As a guest in this country, I am honored to be able to contribute through the school and get to know these little ones so well. Naga was in preschool today. I got to play with him…when he finally let me catch him.
2. Naandi’s Nanhi Khali program supports girls in government schools. Contact the Naandi corporate office at 040 2355 6491 or e-mail to info@naandi.net. You can donate on-line at: http://www.naandi.org/Support/EnterProfile.asp
3. Help bring Naandi into all the Hy-Tech City (see map) area government schools. Hy-Tech City are the pink and green parts along the right, center side. Contact Leigh Anne Gilbert to show your support. [leighanne at gmail.com] If e-mail is unavailable, sms/call 98 4981 8888.
4. The endowment fund for the Rainbow Primary School will be open for contributions in 2008. The endowment fund will go to: teacher salaries to ensure a low student to teacher ratio, to buy teaching aides, and to partially fund field trips. Contact Leigh Anne Gilbert for more information and for all the financial reports on the school. [leighanne at gmail.com] If e-mail is unavailable, sms/call 98 4981 8888.
YOU MADE IT! All the way through that article, what a trooper!
Here is the first official picture-cartoon strip from Mastan Nagar as your reward.
Awww, two buddies!! So sweet!
These two are preschoolers at the Rainbow School. I have named, "Thing 1 and Thing 2" after the Dr. Seuss' favorite pair of troublemakers.
Here is a closeup of Thing 1. What is that in his mouth?
He had Thing 2 in a headlock!
And Thing 1 took Thing 2's candy! That is what is in his mouth.
Preschool is a contact sport no matter what country you live in.
Naga’s little toddler head bob bob bobs along when he runs on his thin, dusty legs. He is two and a half feet tall with a crew cut and wide, wild, intelligent eyes. Naga was my first friend in the Mastan Nagar slum. He is independent, climbs like a monkey, and runs fast. I spend too much time chasing him. His mother, Nagama, is always working. Her head is down, over the cooking or over the wash. She never knows where Naga has run to, yet he keeps to an imaginary a fifteen-foot boundary that stretches between his hut, his school, and the flat space in the dirt road in front of the school where his two older brothers play cricket.
I know Naga and three hundred of his fellow slum children through my work with the Rainbow Primary School. This is how our friendship began. This little bit of our story here ends with some lessons learned and ways others can help.
In September 2005, a regal and lovely Hyderabadi named Kalpana introduced herself to me. She had come to know of me through a very small project I conducted at the Madhapur Government School, five minutes from my house in Hy-Tech City. Long ago, Kalpana began working in by gathering children and teaching them under the trees. Now, her volunteer career includes assisting the government in establishing schools in slum areas around Hy-Tech City.
By October 2005, I agreed to take on one of her projects. Mastan Nagar is a slum neighborhood off road number 46 in Jubilee Hills, about ten minutes from Hy-Tech City. The Mastan Nagar inhabitants belong to the “backwards” and “scheduled” castes, including the caste formerly labeled “untouchables,” now called Dalhits. There are Christians and Muslims among the mostly Hindu population along with about a dozen Banjaran and Lombardi tribal families. Most of the fathers work as day-laborers: stone cutters, three-wheeler drivers, and ditch-diggers. Some of the mothers are also day-laborers and others work in houses as maids or cooks. There are some lucky mothers who stay at home with their children. These mothers are endlessly busy with cooking, cleaning, chasing children, and finding additional food and fuel.
There are around 600 children in the neighborhood. A handful of these go to school in far-away government boarding schools for needy children. Some of the older children go to the government school about three miles away in Madhapur (Hy-Tech City). Some of the younger children go private schools close by which cost about 200 rupees a month (about $3 U.S.). About two-dozen children work in tea stalls, in woodshops, or as goatherders. In October 2005, there were three-hundred children, aged three to twelve, who were not going to school at all. They were running wild in the streets.
Kalpana arranged for her government contacts to supply me with a land grant and some funding for a permanent school building. I set up a temporary structure to house the school until our permanent building was constructed. Kalpana trained me on how to work with the government for funding. I started to recruit and train the teachers on child-centered instruction methods modified, of course, to take advantage of the different set of resources found in the slum. We began with thirty students and four teachers. That was when I met Naga. At our first Parents Meeting in late October, the children and parents voted to choose “Rainbow Primary School” as the name of the school. I started posting our funniest or most outrageous experiences on-line at www.rainbowprimaryschool.com.
By the end of November 2005, the streets were quiet. All the kids were in school.
Today, 21 March 2007, was another hot, sultry morning in the temporary preschool room. It has a metal roof with thatch walls and mats on the floor. The children are sitting in a circle with their teacher or coming in to the class. Just like preschool parents all over the world, the parents gently lead them in and then walk away fast-fast in case their little one throws a fit. These children are so tiny for their ages (two to four), but so self-controlled. The big kids in third and fourth standard classes sit outside the preschool, but the little ones never bother them. In the slum, the children partially raise each other while the parents work. Then at night, families sleep all together like puppies in a big pile, as do most all families throughout the developing world. Privacy would be … unsettling.
There are always so many new preschool students as parents migrate in from the countryside for work in the city. Some of these new students are eating chalk because they are hungry. For the thirtieth time that month, I remind myself to reach out to new partner organizations to start a breakfast program for the preschool. Malnutrition is the biggest challenge to their learning. But they are learning.
Marie Montessori started her work in a slum in Rome. It is no wonder hands-on Montessori methods are easy for these preschoolers to understand. Slum children naturally learn through their hands. Sticks, dirt, other children, puppies; the slum children are allowed to play with anything. They get very grubby. Without fail, even during water shortages, the mothers wash the children each morning before school following a strict pan-Indian cultural phenomenon called the “morning purification ritual.” The children are soaped up and scrubbed with a strong neem soap, then rinsed. This is done three times, no less. Coconut oil is a natural defense against lice and fantastic hair conditioner for their thick, gorgeous, porous hair. The oil goes into their hair, and then the hair is brushed or braided into a glossy helmet. By the time the preschoolers get to school, they are dusty again.
Apart from nutrition, the other big challenge is getting these preschool students to relax and develop independent critical thinking skills. The preschoolers are easing into the idea that learning can be fun, but they still want to wait, wait, wait and then repeat or imitate. It gets annoying. But in the slum, there are very immediate dangers and caution is an early lesson every child absorbs. All of the preschoolers have little scars from tumbles and cooking fires. Getting them to relax enough to dance around is a slow process. By second standard, the slum kids have much more confidence. They become wild with happiness to have larger bodies and a great deal of working knowledge of their environment.
This is less true for the girls. The little girls are even more reserved than the boys in preschool and, with a few exceptions, they stay that way. From babies they are treated differently. This is not meant to be unloving. Girls are expected to serve, Stepford wife style, throughout their lives. The condition of these girls reminds me so much of growing up in the pre-women’s liberation era in the American South. In the Mastan Nagar slum, the families never want to give the girls the illusion that they can expect to have help in any way. It would just spoil them. Then the girls would not be ready for the backbreaking work of raising children in poverty. So, showing tenderness to their girl children would only break their hearts later. As the modern world seeps into the slum, the older girls in the Rainbow School talk about careers, not motherhood. It will take a radical step from the girls to continue their education and radical intervention with the parents to help them understand how an educated daughter benefits them. All most parents want from their daughters are tidy huts and a nice bunch of babies. Today, as I look around, the huts are universally neat and tidy, and there are new babies in every other hut.
Raising children here in poverty is terribly hard, but not lonely. It is certainly not as lonely as being a parent in the United States. After school, the children run wherever they wish. Everyone watches and helps using that sixth sense all mothers develop to keep one eye on their washing and one eye on the street full of kids and toddlers. While these parents lack even the most basic information on almost every parenting subject, from health to child development, they do help each other to the best of their abilities. Since most families are recent arrivals from the rural areas, they are cut off from their traditional inter-generational source of parenting advice and support. While this creates immense pressure on new arrivals; friends are made fast. Cardboard huts do make for good neighbors, even though the conditions are rather horrifying for Western parents.
Construction on the new school building begins on Monday. The seven teachers and Usha Rani, our headmistress, will move in sometime in July.
The lessons learned from the experience are:
- The growing the Indian economy will do more to alleviate poverty than any government program. Pushing reforms to open the Indian market are absolutely essential to eroding the power of the black market which rules the slums.
- Government school-going children are by far the largest set of truly needy children in India. They should be a primary focus for anyone seeking a target as to where to being to help the poor. Strengthen government institutions to help government schools is a critical step to helping these government schools. Good government managers delivering public funds and resources to the schools are required, or good non-profits who can do the job to help government managers.
- Third, there are resources available in many governmental “schemes” (that means “plans” in Indian English) and through non-profit organizations, but there needs to be a connection to channel these different resources to serve a government school. Also, volunteers are everywhere and provide an invaluable source of fun in-school help. These resources are key to making a school a real school where children actually learn.
- And, finally, there is immense talent in these children. They are unmatched in terms of dedication to their studies and their innovative spirit. Their motivation is poverty.
www.naandi.org has more information.
I am going to import the “Ensuring Children Learn” model used by Naandi back to the United States. Naandi is a profoundly groundbreaking public-private partnership that works more effectively to reform and strengthen government schools than anything else I have come across. As expected, international and in-country donors are flocking to support the Naandi Foudation’s work. These include the Susan and Michael Dell Foundation, J.P. Morgan Stanley, E-Bay India, Mahindra and Mahindra, HDFC, Hindustan Petroleum, Dr. Reddy Laboratories, among hundreds of others.
When I need inspiration, I go to the Rainbow School. When I am cranky, I go to the school. When I am overwhelmed by a challenge, I go to the school. When I want to have a great time with my daughter, I take her to the school. It is my happy place. As a guest in this country, I am honored to be able to contribute through the school and get to know these little ones so well. Naga was in preschool today. I got to play with him…when he finally let me catch him.
How You Can Help
1. Naandi has a corporate volunteer program that trains and sends employees (expat and Indian) to work on a regular basis in government schools. Corporations involved (across India) include Microsoft, Johnson and Johnson India, ABN Amro, and PortalPlayer among others. To set up a corporate volunteer program, contact the Naandi corporate office at 040 2355 6491 or e-mail to info@naandi.net. Individual volunteers in the Hyderabad area can also call or sign up on-line at: http://www.naandi.org/Support/Volunteer.asp2. Naandi’s Nanhi Khali program supports girls in government schools. Contact the Naandi corporate office at 040 2355 6491 or e-mail to info@naandi.net. You can donate on-line at: http://www.naandi.org/Support/EnterProfile.asp
3. Help bring Naandi into all the Hy-Tech City (see map) area government schools. Hy-Tech City are the pink and green parts along the right, center side. Contact Leigh Anne Gilbert to show your support. [leighanne at gmail.com] If e-mail is unavailable, sms/call 98 4981 8888.4. The endowment fund for the Rainbow Primary School will be open for contributions in 2008. The endowment fund will go to: teacher salaries to ensure a low student to teacher ratio, to buy teaching aides, and to partially fund field trips. Contact Leigh Anne Gilbert for more information and for all the financial reports on the school. [leighanne at gmail.com] If e-mail is unavailable, sms/call 98 4981 8888.
YOU MADE IT! All the way through that article, what a trooper!
Here is the first official picture-cartoon strip from Mastan Nagar as your reward.
Awww, two buddies!! So sweet!
These two are preschoolers at the Rainbow School. I have named, "Thing 1 and Thing 2" after the Dr. Seuss' favorite pair of troublemakers.
Here is a closeup of Thing 1. What is that in his mouth?
He had Thing 2 in a headlock!
And Thing 1 took Thing 2's candy! That is what is in his mouth.
Preschool is a contact sport no matter what country you live in.
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