chartandwaters

The lighting on these photos is so much better on my camera than on this monitor.

The organization that runs the room we used is "Project Concern International", or PCI. They do a lot of activities in the shelter and have many volunteers who hang out there (some of them live there). Most of the volunteers appear hopeful that their job might advance to employment. The room is primarily reserved for non-formal education (NFE) classes, also called tution, taught by beautiful Kavitha and one helpful Selvam, both of whom stayed on after their classes were over to assist us with the workshop.

We gave two workshops--did I say that?--with one week separating them. The first workshop we gave was just for me to get comfortable with the children and get a sense of what kind of (second) workshop they might benefit from. It was seven days, from 4:30--7:30, and was supposed to be for thirty girls though that number quickly grew. We also set an age limit that expanded for many reasons. Luckily, kids seem to work better together here than a bunch of different-aged kids might at home.

I designed the workshop for girls for a few different reasons, but in the end it probably just made for a more comfortable environment for them. (Some boys would loiter around the entrance, staring persistently in. On the fourth day, when we weren't looking, one of the PCI volunteers gave them supplies and they settled into a corner where they proceeded to work very, very seriously and produce complex, developed paintings. I had thought perhaps they had just felt left out, but no, they wanted to make ART.)

I thought we might do some dance but the dance the young girls wanted to do was--whew!--too racy, and only some of the older girls were permitted to dance.

NFE is for people who have dropped out of regular school; even if you attend NFE, you are called a "drop-out". NFE is for both boys and girls but all the people in the last class of the day--the class before our workshop--were Muslim women. When we asked why, it was explained that at home many of them dropped out because education was considered unnecessary, but now that they were at the shelter and education was convenient, many had started going again. Men were also free to come, but they more frequently had begun some kind of work. In the Hindu community, both young men and young women would be permitted and might be encouraged to work. Some of the young women dropped out before the tsunami; others dropped out after, typically as a result of trauma.



Wacky assignment for early arrivers where we made a collage walkway to the center of the room. The kids cut shapes out of paper I had swashed with water and scattered them in a path mixed with flowers and petals from garlands. (Garlands cheap and sold on streets, popular for hair and ritual.)

The man in the picture is Manihendran, he is 9th standard (grade) and he as our guy Friday for everything.




We also decorated the room with cut-out, fringed newspaper. The kids loved it but some of the volunteers suggested to Gandhi, maybe a little critically, that we buy colored paper next time. Gandhi explained that we were trying to show the value of waste materials, and they liked that idea.