Back Home

Returning home felt like a whirlwind. Although my time in India was wonderful, replete with new learning experiences, expansion of cultural understandings and opportunities to make friends, returning to the US felt necessary. Now back, I want to return to India immediately. The grass is always greener on the other side. I am lucky to have been afforded the opportunity to visit India, and share my experiences with friends and family here in the US upon my return. I find although there are less people on the streets in Denver, less vibrancy of colors adorning the women as I walk the avenues here, both places provide unique opportunities to enjoy the human experience. I may miss the chaos of the streets and the generous offerings of chai, but I find solace in the abundance of coffee shop meetings with friends, the golds and reds of Autumn, and the comfort of home.

We present our report from the summer today to our peers and some faculty members. The transition from acting in the field to evaluating, analyzing and improving in the lab, while supposedly ingrained in our malleable student minds, leaves me wanting to return to the field. This presentation is a unique opportunity to focus on a single example from the field, discuss some of the positive and negative situations and get feedback from colleagues. We hope that the input we receive today will help us as we write reports about our experiences, but will also assist future interns with the JaiShankar Memorial Centre, New Concept and the Gender Resource Centers.

I hope that the friends I was able to make back in India, Vimala, Uma, Chaya, Anju, Suresh, Ashutosh, Kirti, Rakhi, Pratima, Bobby, Manju, Surkhi, Paresh, Praveen, Subash, and everyone else at NC/JMC/GRC thrive in the years to come. Perhaps soon I will see you in India again or in the US.

All the best,
Sarah Miller

Audio Interview with Volunteers - Judah and Ambri

This summer, two teachers (Judah Lakin and Ambri Pukhraj) from the U.S. volunteered their efforts and taught the children at JMC.

The transcript of the audio is given below the image. You can click on the image below to listen to the interview.

Transcript

Judah Lakin (JL) – hello, my name is Judah Lakin and I am a high school teacher from California.

Ambri Pukhraj (AP) – My name is Ambri Pukhraj, I grew up in Chandigarh, but I’ve been in America for the past eight years and I just finished my third year of teaching.

JMC – What motivated you to volunteer for an activity such as this in your vacation time?

JL: Normally during summer I try to travel and if I am there for about four weeks, I try to do some volunteer work. When we planned on coming here, we thought of doing some volunteer work. It just worked out in terms of the place that we could do it. It is usually in an attempt to learn a bit about the educational system wherever we are travelling.

AP: it was similar for me. I volunteered more in America than in India. On the trip back, I really wanted to do the same here, and work with low income students here. Judah and I both teach low income students in America, and it was interesting to see how that population is in India.

JMC: what is your teaching methodology with kids at JMC and how do you determine this?

JL: we had to goals. One was to try and make it as interactive as possible, because we understood that a lot of the time, they just sit and copy stuff off the board. We did some of that, but we also tried to interact with the kids more. We had only eight days, so we wanted to have a final product that they could use, and we figured out what that was and figured out all the steps we had to do, to get there.

AP: from my memory of going to school in India, I remember most of classes involved just sitting and taking in the information that teachers gave us. I think it’s important to both of us that our students also have the ability to participate and speak out and practice within the class period. I think that was something we were able to accomplish, every class we tried to have time when they could work with us and practice what they had learnt in the first half of the class.

JMC: what has your interaction with these children taught you as teachers and what have been the highlights during this period?

AP: I’ll take this one first. The most exciting part for me was just how enthusiastic the children were about learning. I think I speak for the two of us when I say that we often teach students who are very reluctant to learn. So, it was very motivating to have students who come to class so excited and really just want to learn all that they can. That was the highlight for me.

JL: I feel the same way. What I was most impressed by was that they had already been to school and this was an extra thing on top of school and they were generally more interested, motivated and generally liking school more than the average American student. It is always interesting to see such things, in Ghana as well, where they have such limited resources and they are still much more interested and much more motivated. I can’t image an American classroom where twenty kids would sit on a floor with mats in a really hot room and be totally motivated to try there hand at a few English words. I didn’t think that would happen.

AP: that and they were really just very affectionate towards us and that made us feel really welcome.

JMC: do you have any lessons that you would like to share with us at JMC that would help us in the future?

AP: I think one of the most important lessons for any teacher and anyone working with students who are at an academic disadvantage is the scope of how much needs to be taught, the number of skills, the amount of contents can be sort of overwhelming. I think with the limited time we had, it was really important to narrow it down to the most essential information.

JMC: how would you like to keep in touch with us at JMC?

AP: we’ve been promised monthly letters and photographs so we are really looking forward to that and we’ll be really good about responding to those as well. But we really want to hear from the students as regularly as we can.

JMC: is there anything else you would like to say?

AP: I’d like to say thank you for letting us do this. We came two weeks ago, and by the end of the week, we’d been given this opportunity to volunteer and we had complete freedom to do what we wanted. And that was really nice.

JL: Thank you so much for this chance. It’s been lovely.

JMC: Lovely talking to you both.

Monsooned, Fortified, and Content

Although Nicole has already left, the remaining 3 of us embarked on a final project for the summer last week. Blaire, Britt and I (Sarah) traveled to Udaipur to run some program evaluations of the NGO, Seva Mandir. We spent 3 days viewing their programs and interviewing staff. It was an extremely informative visit. Seva Mandir runs numerous programs parallel to those orchestrated by the JMC, GRC, and New Concept; however, these programs are conducted in a primarily rural setting in the blocks neighboring the city itself.

One interesting program they run is called the Bal Wari Program. This program is designed similarly to the anganwadi centers. One difference is that it keeps children all day to allow the parents to work in the fields. Secondly, it provides multiple meals to the children. Lastly, it works closely with the other health programs run by Seva Mandir to guarantee basic levels of health for all children. This program really highlighted some of the deficiencies we had observed this summer in the anganwadis of south Delhi and revealed options for future service enhancement.

A second program we enjoyed learning about is their iron folate fortification program. Seva Mandir has supplied the machinery and taught many of the millers in the 5 blocks they work in to fortify all flour products with iron and folic acid. The fortification mixture is provided free of charge. Seva Mandir also held taste samplings in the village to prove the mixtures quality. This program will enable the villagers to reduce incidence of anemia and improve development and is very effective. We were very happy to hear that many biscuit manufacturers and other food manufacturers are also implementing iron fortification in certain foods nationwide.

Overall, we were truly impressed with Seva Mandir. The organization was well run, effective and trusted. With gorgeous landscape and monsoon rains to impress anyone and organizations like Seva Mandir, Udaipur will remain a rich example of effective health programming in rural settings for us in the future.

With fond memories of the City of Lakes,

Sarah

Training the Trainers

Everything is still very much on schedule as we get down to our final days with New Concept/Jaishankar Memorial Centre! We have finished our clinic surveys, meeting our goal for the summer. We are currently collecting the GPS coordinates of all Anganwadi centres in Jasola, Shaheen Bagh, and Abul Fazal. In doing so, we've met the Anganwadi teachers and have been learning more about the services available at these centres. We are also working on creating maps of the area that will ideally incorporate all of the data points we've collected.

I must also personally add that I have been incredibly proud of the lovely women who have been studying very hard to become trainers of community health volunteers. We are covering a lot of material (the human body, changes during adolescence, pregnancy, labour and delivery, infant care, nutrition, and government schemes) very quickly, and the students are always so excited and engaged. We could not have asked for a better group of trainers. They very clearly care about the communities they serve and take a special interest in the material as mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, and friends. The group of five has been performing very well in class sessions; they ask wonderful questions, take thorough notes, and performed very well on the last exam. So far, two of the five students have given presentations as practice for when they begin teaching. I was worried that some of the material we had been teaching would be lost in translation, but their presentations proved otherwise! We could not have been happier to have shown that language has not been an insurmountable barrier to knowledge.

These five women, along with the other staff members of New Concept, the JMC, and the GRC have been critical to the success of our time here in Delhi. While we still have over a week left, it is so important that we say thank you to everyone who has been so helpful in our work. It is incredibly motivating and fulfilling to be surrounded by so many people who care about the same things as you.

Nicole Wong

Full Speed Ahead

We have reached the end of another week, and our project continues to forge ahead full speed. This week has been exciting with lots going on. Surveying of clinics is nearing the end, with only a few more to go before reaching our goal. We also visited another GRC, which was incredibly interesting. Mamta GRC, which we visited, as been in place for significantly longer than the GRC we are working with in Jasola Vihar, so it was great to get a grasp on their programs which are similar to what we are working on. A community meeting in Shaheen Bagh was also held this week, which illuminated another 4 volunteers for Community Health Volunteers.

We are very excited to see outside support and participation! We are also continued to “train the trainers” of the Community Health Volunteers. It has been a challenge to be both the teachers, and often times the student as we are constantly learning as we go. Language and cultural barriers continue to present themselves, but the interest and engagement from the women has been rewarding. We look forward to continuing our many tasks in the next two weeks. We are also excited to be going to Amritsar this weekend to see the Golden Temple. It will be our first trip outside of Delhi for the four of us together, so it is sure to be an adventure.

Britt Reiersgord, Intern (Denver University, U.S.A)

Good Science

As of Today, July 19th, our project is progressing quite nicely. We are close to meeting our goal of surveying all targeted facilities, and the information gathered thus far has been enlightening. There have been a few bumps along the way; certain questions have proven to yield ambiguous answers, certain choices in terminology have embarrassingly revealed our layperson status on medical issues, and we have identified pertinent information that was left out of the survey. In the name of "good science" and consistency, we have fought the urge to alter the survey mid-collection. In spite of the minor shortcomings, the final data promises to be extremely useful for the Gender Resource Center and Community Health Volunteers.

For the upcoming week, we are all excited to partake in a community outreach meeting, which will be instrumental in identifying potential health volunteer candidates (it will also be our first attempt at the Appreciative Inquiry method of data collection). Additionally, we will be venturing to another Gender Resource Center in the area to see which programs they have instituted and hopefully learn a thing or two...or twenty.

Blaire Davis, Intern (Denver University, U.S.A)

Hello

We at Jai Shankar Memorial have started a blog where interns, volunteers, staff and others working (or those who have worked) with us pen down their thoughts, experiences and ideas. We hope you enjoy, and learn more about us.

You can also visit us at www.jmcindia.org

Contributors to the blog
Blaire Davis - Studies in the Denver University (DU) Global Finance, Trade, and Economic Integration program, and has a strong background in program evaluation and economics (BA). Blaire has worked in Thailand and traveled quite a bit in India.

Sarah Miller - Studies in the DU International Development program and has a strong human rights background. She has worked on short projects in India and in Africa.

Britt Reiersgord - Student in the DU International Administration program, Britt is the unofficial GIS point person, and also a whiz at database management. She has spent a fair amount of time in Cameroon.

Nicole Wong - is completing the DU- MA in International Studies and plans to apply to medical school as soon as she finishes. not traveled much for work, Nicole did her BA thesis on plague and influenza outbreaks in colonial India has been focusing on sex workers in India. As an undergrad at DU she did a major in history with a triple minor in bio, chemistry, physics (pre-med).