How do we get individuals to share talent and time with 'have nots' in a neighbourhood campus?
I have tried out some ideas but few have worked.
Often, those who make contact are seeking a job.
'Mylapore Times' works closely with a middle school in Raja Annamalaipuram.
Every year, we try to enlist the support of people who can engage the children in extra-curricular activities.
Once, a young artist from Adyar and a dancer from Mylapore handled classes on this campus and lo! the children who attended them not only enjoyed the sessions but went on to excel at a few local competitions.
But the call for a volunteer to continue the dance and performance sessions the next year drew a blank. So we had to fall back on a resource who made a living by taking classes at a number of schools.
I wonder if we can create a bank of volunteers who are keen to share talent and time at local schools.
There is a large Corporation Higher Secondary School close to our office in Alwarpet and I believe its students would welcome guests who can interact with them through the year.
Perhaps one can host workshops on basic skill training and effective communication.
Or show the students how to use software in basic design.
Or take classes in spoken English.
Off and on we do hear of one school adopting another in the neighbourhood.
This is a concept that should be encouraged.
Recently, as part of the jubilee celebrations of Padma Seshadri Bal Bhavan schools, the teachers at its K. K. Nagar campus started workshops at the local Corporation school in MGR Nagar, which isn't far away.
I am told that the collaboration will continue through the year.
If you have heard of similar 'adoptions', I would like to have information on them.
We do have the Lions and Rotary Clubs supporting local schools.
But what we also need are people of the neighbourhood who can dedicate some time for the children next door who seek better education.
6 comments:
I agree with you , Vincent that it is hard to find people who can spare the time and effort to do some actual interaction.
If you find some answers, tell me please.
But its wonderful you are so active on so many different fronts:-)
Thanks for the comments.
Will post here developments on this front . . .
Valuable inputs. And good to see you ack efforts by Rotary - just happened to see couple of postings in arcot road times & wish to see many more community focused views. This way you catalyze to Solution. Good one !
Sinking fund is a corpus of equal lumpsum amount contributed once by all the residents of an apartment block to take care of repairs, renovations, whitewashing and painting of common faicilites. This amount gets depleted every year due to the above cited expenditure. In order to avoid this it is practically seen that the initial corpus should be minimum two lacs to begin with which needs to be topped up whenever the need arises. Alternatively the amount of monthly maintenance charges needs to be fixed in such a way that there is always a surplus after meeting monthly expenditure like watchmen salaries and electricity charges towards common lighting, lift and water pumps. This surplus amount at the end of each month is ploughed back into the corpus. It is also advisable to park investible amount in corpus in bank FDs for appreciation.
V. N. Rao
Anutaks, I'd welcome you too to contribute to content on www.arcotroadtimes,com.
Currently, we are interacting with schools and community groups to get them to report news and info and enrich the web site.
Thanks Rao for your explanation. (You should have posted it in my most recent post on 'watchmen'.
Never mind! Comments are always welcome.
Thanks for your inputs sir. Infact I had e-mailed an article on "Event posting 18-July-208: Public Awareness campaign on Eye Donation" to arcotroadtimes@vsnl.net on Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 12:55 AM & awaiting the post. Request you to Kindly look into it.
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