School Pictures!

Pria, Meenakshi, Esther and I went out to the school in March and did a school picture day. Most of the students have probably never had a picture of themselves and they were more than happy to pose for the camera. Here are some of the shots.

Hooray for new classrooms!!!!!

I went to visit the school today with Esther, Priya, and Maya and we had a great time doing stories and songs with the kids.  We read the Hungry Catterpillar and the Three Little Pigs and sang some songs like the Hokey Pokey, Head, Shoulders, Knees, Toes, and The Wheels on the bus.  The kids were all smiles today and soooo excited to show off their new classrooms!!!  The construction on the six classrooms is almost finished and a few of the classes are already using the rooms and it makes a world of difference--now when the monsoon rains come they won't have to cancel class!  The last picture is of Neelam (the school director) standly proudly outside of the new school--she started this school 9 years ago on a blanket in a field with 5 students and now it has grown to almost 200 students.  Thanks to her untiring work and petitions to Unitech and the village land owners, and other donors, the children can now have a refuge from the elements and a more stable learning environment.  

Traveling Nurse Tracy

I am trying to catch up on some long overdue posts! Here are some pics of my friend Tracy who came out to the school with me to do some well child check-ups.  She took the height and weight of each child and then taught some vocabulary about the body and read a story about going to the doctor. All of the kids got a sticker for participating and they were elated.  Some of the teachers wanted to get on the scale too--they wanted to know how much they weighed and were so excited to see how the digital scale worked.  Go Tracy!!

Christmas Celebrations 2012

On Friday Dec.21st, Neelam (one of the school's directors) invited a few classes from my son Isaac's school to come sing Christmas carols and so a dance presentation for the kids at the MD school.  They also brought muffins and sweets for each of the kids and donations of clothes, books, and toys.  I also brought gifts to pass out to the kids that had been donated by my church and by a generous donation from my friend Caroline and her son Jack.  The kids were so excited to get their very own sparkly parcel and it was also such a good experience for Isaac and his classmates to experience the joy of giving.  The smiles on all of the kids faces were priceless.  

Storytime with Cows and Kids. . .

Storytime with Cows and Kids. . .

Imagine a dusty open field with pigs and dogs wandering around.  Imagine a low brick wall with cows stretching their necks over the top.  Imagine construction projects with women carrying towers of bricks on their heads and men herding donkeys laden with dirt.  Now imagine a school in the middle of all of this. . .Welcome to the Maharishi Dayanand Educational Society School in Gurgaon, India.  The children study while sitting crowded together on several different blankets spread out across a field and the teachers use chalkboards held up with wooden art easels.   Not the ideal learning environment, but amazingly these teachers and students find a way to teach and learn six days a week. 

      I discovered this school through my neighbor Ruchi when I asked her if she knew of any volunteer opportunities close by.  She invited me to come with her to the school and said maybe I could help teach English to the older grades.  My first day at the school, the teacher handed me a government issued text book and after pointing to the lesson number, she let me take charge of the teaching.  I found teaching with the government text awkward though and it was a very dry teaching resource.  I wanted to find something interesting to get the kids excited about learning English, but I wasn’t sure what would work best at this school.  Then I decided to bring a storybook to the class and use the vocabulary in the book as the basis of a mini English lesson.  Bingo.  The kids absorbed the magic of the story like parched desert sand welcoming monsoon rains.  I read them the Hungry Caterpillar, but we didn’t “just” read it.  They interacted with it.  They pretended to eat the apples, strawberries, and oranges like the caterpillar.  They turned themselves into ice cream cones, watermelons, and lollipops and we talked about what foods they liked and didn’t like.  They acted out the caterpillar spinning a cocoon around itself and then they all flew out as colorful butterflies ready to talk about all of the colors of the rainbow in English.  The kids also taught me the Hindi words for vocabulary in the story and the book was the perfect launch pad for a meaningful language exchange. I knew that I had found sweet spot that day and from then on I became the story lady.  With permission from the teachers, I started visiting the different classes so that I could give all of the students at the school the chance to participate in storybook magic.  The kids treat me like a rockstar and I have been addicted to volunteering at the school for months now. 

               On Thanksgiving, my friends Robyn, Claire, and Tulika came to the school with me and we engaged a blanket of thirty pre-k students in a turkey coloring art project.  The kids loved the chance to be creative, trade crayons, and decorate their turkeys with sparkly stickers.  Claire and I also did stories with some of the other classes and Claire put together a small group where each child took a turn reading a page.  I love bringing friends with me to volunteer because I always get new insights and ideas about how to help the school.  Tulika had the idea of doing an “operation smile” at the school and taking school pictures of the kids as well as class photos for them to take home.  The children love having their picture taken but most of them have probably never had a photo of their own.   We decided to put together a team to tackle this project.  

        Being in India, its easy to become overwhelmed with the amount of poverty and need that pervades the surroundings here.  We see encampments made of plastic bags and women walking with their babies from car to car asking for money.  We see construction sites with migrant workers living right next to the buildings in shacks with children running around with ragged clothing and no shoes.  I think that all of us want to do something meaningful to help, but it’s hard to navigate those first steps.  For me finding those first steps to the school has made a huge difference in how I feel here in India.  I love the opportunity to give something meaningful to the community and interact with and learn from these kids.  It’s inspiring to see these children and their zeal for learning in such tough circumstances and it’s empowering to know that there is a small way I can be a force for good instead of just wondering how to help.

Let's get some new chalkboards!

Info about the School and how to help

Greetings from India! My husband, James Nuttall, is a 2010 Wharton MBA, and after graduation, James decided to start his own beverage company with an Indian colleague from Wharton, so we are now living in Gurgaon, India (suburb of New Delhi). For the past six months I have been volunteering my time at a local school in our neighborhood that is for children below the poverty line. There are many families in our area that work as migrant construction workers, security guards, rickshaw drivers, domestic help, etc. These families cannot afford the transportation to send their children to government schools, so they attend a makeshift school which is run by a group of concerned citizens and relies completely on donations.

Basically, the “school” is an outdoor area where the children bunch together on large blankets and the teachers use chalk boards on easels for instruction. There are about 200 students divided into 7 grades preschool through fourth grade. The kids are very eager to learn, and attendance at the school is high even though the students have to endure weather extremes, wandering livestock, and lack of any amenities. I go to the school a few times a week and read interactive story books with several of the classes to help them learn English and gain a love of reading. The needs of the school are immense, but the most pressing need is for new chalkboards because ones currently in use are very old, damaged, and nearly unusable. I thought that it would be a perfect opportunity to link interested friends with a grassroots international development project and raise money to buy the school new chalkboards. The cost of the chalkboards would be $400 and any extra money raised could be used for books, sports equipment, and art supplies for the children.

Ultimately, it would be awesome to raise money for an actual school building for these kids, but I think the modest goal of new chalkboards is a good place to start. I am posting pictures of the school and the children and I would be happy to pass along any other necessary information. A little bit of money could go a very long way for this school. I will personally use the funds to go buy the chalkboards and deliver them to the school and post pictures of the event. Money can be donated through my husbands paypal account using the email jpnuttall@yahoo.com. If you haven't used paypal before you will need to set up an account, which is easy. You can contact me if you have any questions.

Thank you so much for taking the time to consider this project!

Sincerely,

Kristy Nuttall