A Brief History of Prayas (April 24, 2005)

PRAYAS EVENING SCHOOL
April 24, 2005


THE BEGINNING

How one wishes one could begin from the beginning! But as things stand now, it has to be begun from the middle and will have to end in the middle. The reason for the former, unfortunately, is that it has been too long since the idea of an Evening school was conceived and the reason for the latter, fortunately, is that the way things are shaping up now, it is hard to predict an early end to such an endeavor, never mind the oftrepeated cliched statement, 'all good things come to an end'.
The idea of an Evening school in IIT was conceived by a group of faculty members and students in the early 90's long before Prayas came into existence in 2001. The need for such a school was felt as it was found that the children of many construction workers and labourers who came in search of work from such far off places like Chhattisgarh and ended up working as daily wage labourers in IIT Kanpur, were deprived of any education, formal or informal. Due to the efforts of the above mentioned group, later some of these children were enrolled into the Opportunity school. However, some children still could not make it to the school for various reasons, one of which being that they had to either help their parents in the work or in case of girls, they had to take care of their kid brothers and sisters in the house in their parents' absence. Thus, the initial idea behind the conception of the Evening school was to provide education to the children inside IIT who could not afford it and to provide guidance to the children whose parents were not educated enough to guide them at home. 'Vivekanand Samiti' and later the newly conceived voluntary organisation called 'Jagriti' were largely instrumental in running the school.
Then Prayas happened. According to folklore, the idea of a students' group called Prayas was conceived on the fateful day of January 26, 2001. Like all new beginnings, there was confusion in the air and it was difficult to concretize the lofty ideas of its founding fathers. However, one concrete step was the involvement of some of the members of Prayas in the running of the Evening school which was largely managed by Jagriti at that time. With time, Jagriti's involvement with the school declined and subsequently, Prayas started taking over the school, to put it crudely. This is not to say that Jagriti's members have completely overlooked the school, but just that the way Prayas has run the school in the last two and a half years without [well, almost] any man power from Jagriti that none has felt any need to pitch in any additional effort. So, it won't be a misnomer to call it Prayas Evening School at this point of time, if naming is something that matters at all.
Well, so much so for the history of the Evening school. It's only natural that quite a few important points might have been missed, but none-the-less this should be able to give at least some idea about its history to start with.



IN THE PRESENT TENSE

Now, let's come to the Evening School as it functions 'now'. Currently, the Evening school has almost 40 children and near about 14 volunteers who are actively involved in the teaching of the children. The most heartening fact is that all the children, without a single exception, go to some school or the other in day time. This is the reason why some people see it as tuition where the children come to seek guidance, albeit free of cost. It is high time we ask this question to ourselves and then seek an answer for the same. One doesn’t know whether to go by the general notion that the word 'tuition' is a much abused term and hence has all the negative connotations associated with it. If we go by this mind-frame, then we are going to end up finding answers to this question in ways that are largely biased as our perspective will be restricted by considerations that can only lead to self-glorification. Let us not attempt any answer to this question and leave it open for all of us to think individually and see if we have enough reasons to call it a school or a tuition.
Until recently (as recent as a couple of months ago), the school (One has reasons to call it a school) had only 5-6 volunteers who played and read, among other things, with the kids. There were some attempts to rope in/ lure (?) some others into it so that the school could run in a better managed way. Blame it on anything [if you have to, that is], these attempts were exercises in futility. Then something happened - Tsunami ??!!...and the number of volunteers multiplied. If anything, the school got at least half a dozen volunteers. And this helped in distributing students into smaller groups, mostly according to class [even the classes that had relatively more students, eg Class VI, were divided into still smaller groups]. Each volunteer was entrusted to taking care of one group. The experiment has more or less been successful.
The school begins at 4.30 pm in winter (and half an hour later otherwise) and closes at around 8 pm/8.30 pm. The first hour is kept for physical exercises and games for the children and the bhaiyas/didis. The boys are happy with football and the girls with kho-kho, kabaddi, gol-kabaddi, chhuachhuai, skipping, chain, flying disk, ring, ice-spice, etc. At times the children play some indoor games like chess, building blocks, riddles, etc. Before long, there was a scarcity of games for the girls due to various reasons -the lack of girl volunteers, being one prime reason, which is no longer the case, at least for the time being.
After playing for about an hour, the children join for the prayer and then the teaching begins. It has been left to the individual volunteers to teach the children in her/his group the way she/he finds appropriate. But one never loses sight of the things that are being taught at the day school where the child goes so that the child is not overburdened. The teaching goes for about two hours and then there is an half hour session in which the children recite poems or tell stories either from their readings or from their own writings. Recently, the bhaiyas/didis are also supposed to tell a story/poem by turn.





MISCELLANEOUS

 The school runs on all days except Sunday. Usually one day (Saturday) is kept for the extracurricular activities of the children like drawing, singing etc which helps develop the soft skills of the children. Even on Sunday mornings, Yoga classes are conducted to which some children come. This is not a compulsory activity for the children, though they are nonetheless encouraged to attend it.

 There are 'education-cum-entertainment' trips arranged for the children on a non-too-frequent basis. And the children celebrate their Annual Day with enthusiasm [Apologies, if it sounds cliched, but one has to see the enthusiasm of the children while preparing for various skits, dances, songs etc. to believe] every year. The ex-students of the school also join in the bandwagon at that time. It is fun and frolic for a week or a fortnight depending upon the magnitude of the preparations.

 An extra effort is made to be in constant interaction with children's parents. The parents' meetings are organised, though with less regularity.

 The school has a decent enough library. The children and the volunteers have contributed towards online cataloguing the books and managing it. The children are encouraged to take home the books and read. A couple of elder children are in charge of the book distribution and related matters. A first aid box is carefully maintained for emergency purposes.

 Some movies and documentaries are screened for the children on a regular basis. There is a computer room which has two PCs in proper condition. The children are sometimes taught the basics.

 Counselling classes for children, especially elder children are also conducted, often in a way that does not become apparent for the children, during their studies.

 The cleaning of the school is done regularly by both the children and bhaiyas/didis by turn.

 Some workshops have been conducted for the children on drawing, paper plane making, etc.

 The volunteers too keep attending various teachers' workshops that are often organised by Prayas or Jagriti, the most recent one being the Eklavya workshop organised by Prayas in collaboration with Jagriti.

 There have been efforts at making and marketing jute-designs, table clothes, handkerchiefs, greeting cards, wall hanging etc. The implementation of the tailoring training has not met with much success, though. A mehndi making workshop has been conducted for the girls which was a great success.

 The school organises drawing competitions and the students are encouraged to participate in other such competitions organised by other organisations as well.

 The school also provides scholarship to a few students mostly on merit-cum-means. At present 5 children are benefiting by this.

 The volunteers and a couple of ex-students give a combined team in various intra-IIT football tournaments that apart from other things, facilitates interaction among them.

 Some times, some children along with volunteers prepare food, go for sight seeing, etc and there are times when any such barrier created by the identities of the bhaiyas/didis and the children seems practically meaningless.

 The school has also been a medium through which some beautiful friendships have had their beginnings and later materialised into great bondings.

 It has been a great learning experience for all of us and continues to remain so. There have been attempts to explore the various aspects of 'meaningful education', eg. curriculum, teaching patterns etc, especially for the school education. The emphasis has been laid on interactive teaching by the volunteers.



To cut a long story short, there have been some 'achievements', but then there are miles to go and hopefully every one of us is aware of the difficulties in treading the path 'less travelled by'.