by anouradha bakshi | Jun 19, 2018 | Anou's Blog
We have recently been informed that one of our major funders will be stopping their funding next year. They had committed to help us for 3 years to allow us to work towards sustainability. Three years ago we were confident that it would be sufficient time to get on our feet but today we realise that though we are well on our way, we are still nowhere near the figure we need to reach. The news shattered many, but unlike earlier times, I remained calm and collected. The past years have been proof that ‘miracles’ happen at Project Why with alacrity and I could still hope for one, but somehow this is not the way ahead this time.
Once again, borrowing Jim Morrison’s words, I decided to Petition the Lord with Prayer. But this time the Prayer was not for a one time miracle, but one to show me the way to stand on our feet.
The question as to why should the Lord or the Universe listen to me and my first answer would be because of all the smiles in Project Why’s custody. These smiles are precious as they mean so many different things: hope, dreams, trust… each needing to be not just saved but respected and honoured.
Every child who enters the portals of Project Why comes there in the hope of changing her life. We give her the space to dare to dream and then a trust bond is created. The proof that this works is in the innumerable success stories we have experienced. Actually they are nothing short of miracles.
The young ‘teacher’ in the picture is our very own Utpal who is now in class XI. He decided to teach English to the Project Why children during his summer break. Without Project Why Utpal may not have survived his burns and would have never gone to a boarding school or for that matter to any school at all. By deciding to share what he has learnt with his less privileged friends, he has shown gratitude and compassion, two values that sadly many have forgotten, but that we at Project Why are determined to respect and teach.
Project Why is replete with such stories, the most stunning one being that of a gypsy lad born on a roadside who went on to walk the ramp in Paris via Project Why.
Project Why is where dreams come true. It is where smiles are kept safe, where the impossible becomes possible. Project Why is where miracles happen every day. My Petition to the Lord is to show me the way to continue fulfilling dreams and I know my Prayer will not go unheard.
On a more serious note we are in the process of finding new avenues of funding and have been moderately successful. It is a huge learning experience and we are slowly learning that raising funds to run the Project is not easy. It is easier garner funds to ‘buy’ things or ‘repair’ centres, than to raise one salary even if it is modest and goes to a person from an underprivileged home.
Many have suggested that we begin ‘making’ things and set up a social enterprise. That was what we had considered many years ago with Planet Why our Guest House with a difference.
It is time to revive Planet Why in another avatar and get the ball rolling.
That is my prayer for Project Why
by anouradha bakshi | Jun 12, 2018 | Anou's Blog
For quite some time now, since Project Why’s revamping began, I have not had the occasion of telling the Project Why story to any audience. Now it is all slick presentations, smart looking documents, strategy plans, projections and plans. This is all needed to make Project Why live beyond me. I have tiptoed out of the way and taken a back seat. But last week we had some guests and potential funders and this time it was left to me to ‘market’ Project Why!
I did it the only way I know: from the heart, living each and every moment again with goosebumps at times and moist eyes along the way, with passion and unlimited love and immense pride. From the humble beginnings, to how each centre came to be, from the trials and tribulations to the successes and setbacks, it all came back. I do not know whether the potential funders were touched, but to me it was much needed catharsis. In all the recent upheavals, I had lost touch with the wonderful achievement that Project Why is.
It may not tick all the boxes, not follow all the rules, it may not look pretty to some, but Project Why is definitely a story to be told. To me is is a tale of miracles big and small. The fact that we not only survived, but thrived for 18 years is the biggest miracle of all. And that too with no strategic plan, no smart presentations! We just did it one day at a time, knowing that someone somewhere was taking care of us.
The little lad in the picture who was given up for dead, is a smart endearing 16 year old who is spending his summer break ‘teaching’ Project Why children. Does it tell the whole story! Changing one life at a time.
Over the years we have changed many. I have lost count.
It is a simple story of the heart, of unwavering faith and unconditional love. I just pray this spirit never get lost over time.
by anouradha bakshi | Jun 5, 2018 | Anou's Blog
The Boards results are out and all Project Why children have cleared them. Congratulations are in order! I am extremely proud of them. These children live in extremely difficult conditions and learn in spite of everything conspiring against them. No place to study as they mostly live in one room tenements with extended families. No support from the family. Quite the contrary often parents discourage and disparage them. Inebriated fathers turn on TV sets at full volume and the risk of losing notes to the whims of a younger sibling is real. No costly tuitions. No access to the Internet. Some even have to work while studying to help the household run. And yet they beat all odds and pass their examinations with to my mind more than respectable marks: one of our students got 81% and many had marks in the seventies.
The reason why I entitled this blog ‘bittersweet’ is that the reality is in our face. These children have to compete with children who have 99% +! So what happens to them. Private commercial institutions are out of their financial reach. The seats in state run universities are few and the competition fierce. The cut off marks always range in the nineties. So those portals are shut to them. What is left are: evening colleges, correspondance degrees, open universities, should they want to pursue formal education, or some low grade commercial institutes that would give them a slighter better job opportunity than just a school leaving certificate.
When you look at the kids in the picture, you cannot guess that some of them are Project Why children and others from an upmarket school. They are just buddies enjoying some quality time together. And yet the road map for both is poles apart. Where one in spite of her best efforts will be constrained to opt for distance learning the other will join a private university should she fail to meet the (ill)famed cut off marks.
Yet all these children are citizens of India, protected by the same Constitution and under the same Right to (quality) Education Act. But that is where it ends. Their destinies are charted by the amount of money their families earn.
The first flaw in my opinion is the skewed marking system followed by the authorities where 33% is sufficient to pass but a student can get 100%. The pass percentage has to be increased to 50% and papers set in such a manner that even the brightest student cannot aspire to more than 80% in some subjects. I still cannot understand how you can score 100% in Humanities. Questions need to test the ability of a child to comprehend, analyse and defend an opinion. Here it simply tests your ability to learn by rote.
Education is not a preferred programme of any Government as children are not vote banks. There are many programmes in place but their execution is poor. Schools run by one teacher are a stark reality of our land. In a country where unemployment is rampant, teachers post lying vacant is anathema.
Commercialising education was the death knell for quality education for the poorest. The state run schools are shunned by the very middle class who studied in them earlier. Over the past decade or so I have myself seen that even in slums, parents who studied in state run schools run from pillar to post and tighten their belts till it hurts to send their kids to a ‘public’ school, the moniker for private schools in India.
Shadow education, the more respectable name for private tuition, is a reality in most developing countries. Many children from less privileged homes cannot afford these classes. It has been our experience of a decade and a half, that teaching in school is ‘geared’ to private tuition, and any child, even the brightest cannot perform well if her learning is limited to classroom study. Project Why children are able to perform well because of the support we give them. We must not forget that in most cases the children get no or little help from home as parents are often illiterate and busy surviving.
The answer to most of these issues would be a common neighbourhood school but that was not the option retained while framing the Right to Education Act. What was proposed was reserving 25% of seats in every school for children from poor economic backgrounds. This was hijacked by the middle class who get their children admitted in this category by procuring forged documents by any means. Till date NO Project Why kid has been able to avail of this reservation!
So when I see my kids performing well by my standard, I feel sad as I know that the roads that should be theirs will never be and the challenge is to help them perform as well as their peers from the other side of the fence
by anouradha bakshi | May 29, 2018 | Anou's Blog
The class XII results are out and the topper secured a whopping 499/500 in Humanities! That is close to 100%. My congratulations to the young lady and to all those who passed their examinations, even those who did with a low percentile because I know that every child puts her best foot forward and gives it her 100%.
Every child who has passed should be celebrated but that is not how it goes in India.
A very incisive and pertinent article by Avijit Pathak entitled A sick society that manufactures failures, gives a very real and almost uncomfortable image of the state of education in India. He writes: Young minds in India are being destroyed by a faulty pattern of education, parental ambitions, the aggression of hyper-competitiveness and a flawed idea of ‘success’. In such a system that brings about the death of creativity, there is no real winner.
The article is a must read. He talks about our children who are growing up with the euphoria of success and the stigma of failures. That is what it is all about. To reach the dreaded class XII Board exams the child is deprived of breathing space between school, tuitions, coaching centres and anxious parents. Nothing else. No poetry, no music, no creative activities, no games, no fresh air, all these being considered a waste of time. All creativity is sacrificed at the alter of success.
You can never be a winner as there is always someone who has done better, and even if you miss the coveted space by1% you are branded a failure. Things have to change but who will bell the cat.
First and foremost being the product of a school system where individual thinking was lauded I am aghast at a system where you can score 100% in subjects like History, English or for that matter any of the social sciences. The testing method is totally flawed as it cannot assess whether the child has understood what she has written and would be able to debate and defend an opinion and its opposite. This is a game we loved to play when we were young and it really was an excellent proof of whether you had understood what you had studied. Questions in our exams were so framed. I still remember the history question I had to defend for my Baccalauréat where the curriculum was from WWI to present times (the 60s). The question was: Had the Allies lost the war, what in your opinion would have been the economic status of Germany. There was no right answer. You had to defend your point of view. So any system that does not allow grasping and comprehending the system and does not leave room for improvement is skewed and gives a false sense of success to the child.
The next point is that our present system aims at creating clones and leaves no room for individuality. It gives you one objective only. This too is wrong. Every child cannot be a doctor or engineer. Every child is not happy being a doctor or an engineer. Our system removes joy form learning. A child may want to be a musician or a farmer and find joy in doing so. Let her. Don’t stand in the way. The world needs all kinds of souls, doctors as well as comedians, artists, writers, entrepreneurs. Find what your child wants to do and encourage her or him fully. Let her shine and not fail.
When I told my darling Popples that he did not have to fulfil my dreams but his own, an artist was born. The world is now opened to him and not strangled by my aspirations for him. And for those of you who may still doubt, this is one of his paintings done in water colours barely a month after he began to paint.
This painting has already earned him kudos and admiration, something his studies did not. The smile on his face says it all.
In today’s world children have to be able to think out of the box if they want to succeed. With fewer ‘jobs’ on offer, they need to create theirs themselves and love what they do. We need to bring up children who are compassionate and grateful and happy in their skin. Society will thank us one day.
by anouradha bakshi | May 22, 2018 | Anou's Blog
The heat is on. Mercury rising! This summer the weather Gods have also sent violent dust and thunder storms. But nothing deters Project Why children from coming to their respective centres and participating in all activities. It is assessment time and no one takes it more seriously than the Yamuna Centre kids. And with reason, as they have to make up for lost years.
Our Yamuna Centre is a little over three years old. Before that these children never attended school. They helped their parents in the fields and lived close to nature as free spirits. Even if they had wanted to go to school, there is no school in the vicinity so that was never an option.
When we decided to open our centre it was foregone that we would run it as a full day intervention and give these children a ‘school’ like environment with a healthy midday meal graciously provided by Azure Hospitality. Our objective was to prepare these kids for Board examinations through the Open school.
We would have never imagined that within three short years we would have our first batch ready: the class of 2019. Six bright children will appear for their class X next year.
Come sunshine or rain, these children are always in the mood to study. Last week was assessment time and everyone took this very seriously even if the temperature was soaring at 45 degrees C.
So proud of my kids
by anouradha bakshi | May 15, 2018 | Anou's Blog
Utpal is at home for his summer break after giving his class X Board Examinations. This young lad is not just watching screens or chilling with pals. He has decided to spend three days a week volunteering at Project Why! One of the group he is ‘teaching’ is the first class X batch of our Yamuna centre. Remember these are the children of agricultural labour whose parents grow vegetables on the banks of the Yamuna and who have never been to school. They are all free spirits who live close to nature and use to help their parents in the fields before we came three years ago and set up our centre. Six of them, are now ready to sit for their class X in 2019. That is how bright these kids are.
Utpal who has just sat for his class X was the ideal person to teach his ‘peers’ and he decided to teach them English. Letter writing, grammar, public speaking: the whole enchilada. And this 16 year old takes his work very seriously and does not miss a class. When I once suggested we do something else he told me very seriously that he had given the students homework and that he had to go to class. I am amazed at how seriously he has taken on this responsibility. But then this child never ceases to amaze me.
When I look at this picture I see one child who 15 years ago was almost given up for dead after suffering third degree burns and then a bunch of children whom everyone had given up on and who would have continued doing what their parents did forever. It is the magic of Project Why that changed everything for them.
In these moments I feel humbled and extremely proud.
God bless them
