1st December Field Visit

Purpose of the visit:

1.    Conduct 45 minutes session on Right to Education

2.    Orientation of Shiksha Samman Diwas

3.    Meeting and decision for Shiksha Samman Diwas

4.    Conversation with community and parents

Participants:

Gosaimath: Anita, Sanjay, Shailendra, Jitu, Ramanti, Saurav. Shailendra’s parents.

It was informed to all fellows that the session will be happening in Gosaimath from 12:00 to 2:00 PM Gosaimath fellows were present at Learning Center. I individually called fellows and they gave me different reasons to be late. We waited for them and began session at 1:15 PM when got to know that others are not coming. 

Entry point:

 We began with sharing the experience of doing play session in schools. And there was lot of discussion about it the high points are as follows

1.    School do not support to do play session in school

2.    Children from other casts troubled our fellows during play session

3.    Teacher got drunk and created a scene while saying 3 children had become a teacher in tola and started this center.

With sharing I thought it’s important to do RtE session with at least this group because there were many issues rising up. 

The session started with sharing Power point presentation (file attached). In the beginning of presentation I asked them few question and review of previous RtE session conducted by Satya.

Activity:

Then I asked them, ‘What are your problems or challenges at school?’ and asked them to jot down in their notebook and I wrote on the board. This activity helped a lot to lead another question which was, What could be solution for that? Can you suggest? And then I wrote on board Problems on one side and Solutions on another side and the responses were:

	Problems/Challenges	Solution/suggestion by fellows
1.	No enough water and Water pump is not working  (Chapakal)	Ask teacher for solution or Ask parents and community to talk to teacher to set a new pump
2.	Mid day meal- Many complains about food and Musahar children sits separately to eat!	Concern Teachers and ask for clean good food or ask parents to visit school during and talk to cook and teacher
3.	Play session in school	Do play session with concerning Teacher and ask CSEI staff to meet teacher
4.	Power (Electricity) arrangement at Learning Center	Solar bulb- talks to community and parents to contribute to set a solar power at center for evening study.

After that we shared many more possibility with overlooking in RtE Act handout. I distributed 5 handouts to fellows and asked them to read the important features of Right to Education Act.

Then fellows began discussions about how they can proceed and talk about the issues with the help of information. Also parent’s participation was a plus point in this session. Shailendra’s father and Mother who is a part of VSS in school. Fellows requested and explained parents that how they can support their children to attain their needs at school.

After that we had a detailed discussion about Shiksha Smman Diwas planning and preparation. As it was discussed with Pankaj in meeting at CSEI office, I gave them brief idea and drawn a picture on the board (picture attached below)

1.    Identify the children whom we want to honor? Why those children? No of children

2.    Write/ record the story of the children

3.    Identify the location to organize an event

4.    Invite to children from 6 tola’s, parents, teachers, tola Sevak, representative. Member from CSEI,Etc

5.    Stage and sitting arrangement,- logistics

6.    Design an event- opening ceremony, cultural progarmme, speeches, honoring ceremony, prize and certification distribution and closing ceremony.

7.    The date of the event tentatively 21^st December

8.    Volunteer team and assign tasks in between

So overall idea about how to organize an event and they came up with many ideas of organizing it by themselves.

This was very interesting conversation with Sanjay on his bicycle on way back from Gosaimath.

He shared that there are many ladies comes to Learning Center when we teach children and they asked if fellows can teach one hour to those group of women from same tola. And fellows actually started teaching women’s basic reading writing skills.

Challenge:

1.    The big challenge is travelling. Like every time I took train from Patna station to Nadwa and from Nadwa I had to wait more than 30 min to wait for auto get loaded (as always) I was sitting in the auto which was overloaded as always  rickshaw drivers drive with overloading passengers and today it got overturned and I was thrown out of rickshaw.

Luckily it did not hurt me more. I got little scratches on my knees but I am okay now. But I honestly say, this is a big risk I am taking to travel like this in the field. I request and would like to ask all to suggest more options and possibilities for travelling in the field. And I can suggest it will be great if someone can accompany for the field. 

2.    I had mention in the beginning that I was waiting for the fellows to join from 12:30to 1:30 PM and that’s how I started session late and finished late. I and Saurav left from Gosaimath at 4:30 at that time it started getting dark. We missed last auto then Sanjay and Shaildra came to drop us till tetari and again I missed the train at 5PM. So I had to come by Auto rickshaw till Patna station which took another 1:30 minutes and I reached home by 7:45 PM.