Despite a strike by the opposition party over fuel tax rises, the children made it to school and I was finally able to start teaching at the Women's Centre. The project has many centres, and the Women's Centre is situated in a village community and despite the name is for children as well as women.
One of the main problems in the poorer areas of India is that women and men are not treated equally. An Indian woman will not defy her husband, will ask her husband for permission even when it comes to family planning, and often lives in fear of her husband - yet she will not leave him. The women centre is there for the empowerment of women and for increasing awareness of women's rights. These women can come for counselling sessions and awareness sessions covering topics such as why you should not marry your child off too young, how to feed your child well, what legal rights women have etc. There are also sessions that train women to sew and be beauticians so that they have the skills to earn a living and not be so reliant on their husbands to support the family. It is very important that these things go on as it is only when women can earn money and support themselves and their families that there will be any chance of moving towards more gender equality and a fairer society.
As I said, the project also educates many primary children from the area with 4 boys classes and 4 girls classes - and these are the children that I shall be teaching spoken English to during the next 7 weeks or so, and I had my first sessions today. All of the children are so respectful and eager to learn, however did seem rather shocked when this 6 foot 3 white guy came and sat in their classroom! One of the girls groups even said that they feared me and thought I was 30 years old! But we overcame that minor stumbling block and I think we made some progress - we did some introductions, animals, food, and emotions from their main textbook.
It is difficult though because in their schools they are taught by repeating what the teacher says and learning things by heart rather than really understanding what is being said - so when you ask a question they will often repeat the question rather than answering it. The older ones that did understand what I was asking them decided to be very clever and turn the lesson on its head, trying to teach me Hindi rather than me teaching them English! Hopefully in 7 weeks I will achieve something with all of the classes.
One very interesting thing that I experienced today was that girls as young as 7 brought their younger siblings to the project with them. Both parents were out working and it is expected that the daughter looks after them - luckily the project does not turn away the siblings but in the case of many (such as Sonu on the previous blog) daughters just do not receive an education at all as they are expected to act like mothers.
This afternoon I managed to have a chat with Anou about the future plans for the project and there is an exciting new project called Planet Why that is currently being discussed. Planet Why is different in that it will actually be a guest house for people to stay at - however it will be completely sustainable and will incorporate the children of project why offering them employment and training. A lot of money is needed for the project to get off the ground but there is a scheme called the "last donation" that is being thought through at present whereby people can make a one off donation to the project and will receive discounts if they visit the guest house, and their name will be on a special wall along with the rest of the donors - the reason why it is the last donation is that once the required money is raised the project will be able to support itself with the revenues generated, which for me is a very exciting prospect. At present, they survive on donations, which are not guaranteed to be a constant source of income, so the idea that the children of the project could be supported without reliance on others,whilst gaining employment and training is amazing. When I have more information on this I will post it on here - there is some general information on project why's website (easily found via google)
That is all for today I think - will try to blog again tomorrow!
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