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Merlin writes about our Chennai Program

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Maria Merlin, who worked with Avanti in Chennai during her training as part of her Master of Social Work course speaks about her experience in Chennai After-School Program.

Hi, as a trainee I did my block placements at Avanti Fellows for 35 days; Avanti’s pedagogy is totally different from what i had expected. It really gave me a good professional exposure where I had to work in a co-ed school for first two weeks of my internship.  Especially while doing my case studies with boys, I was expected to play the role as a motivator, and also to practice all the social work principles. In both professional and personal way Avanti had given me vast exposures to learn and understand the student’s family related problems and helped me to understand and practice various interventions could be made to help the students to concentrate on their studies.

The life skill activities , really made me to utilize my talents and also gave me a precious time to send the content clearly to the students. The students also took active participation in various activities that were conducted.  Most of the students took special interest for the spoken English classes that were conducted. Most of them do like to speak in English, but they were afraid of the negative comments, they might get from their classmates. so, the Saturday ”SPOKEN ENGLISH” activities was a big platform to make every students to take their initiative and talk in English. I was really happy when some of the students met me personally and said that they really enjoyed this type of life skills and spoken English sessions. It made them feel refreshed. Some students even suggested us to conduct life skills one hour every day. At Avanti for the first three weeks we were working with students, the other two weeks we were working on documentation and preparing life skills module for the post summer session. During training at Avanti we were being trained to be Professional at work.

 Trainees Kezia, Maria Merlin and Suganthi (from left to right) at work in one of the Chennai Corporation Schools

The video lectures classes really made the students to learn new English words and to have good relationship with students from other stream and medium. Regular tests were really helpful to make the students to score better marks in their tests and exams. Especially the conceptual questions sessions were interesting for the students. The personal sessions with the students were meaningful and helped to know psychological problems of the students.

Avanti made me to think sometimes ”why dint i have all these in my school times’’?”..Especially every day tests, conceptual questions, follow-ups with drop outs and etc. It gave us a chance to recollect our school days once again. It made us to differentiate the changes we see in our self personally and professionally…!

 

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Kartik’s journey to Stanford

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It should surprise no one that Kartik Sawhney, a top-performing student from the prestigious DPS R. K. Puram, has been admitted to Stanford to study computer science. Blind, Kartik has excelled at calculus with the help of a program he coded that describes the contours of functions using a musical tone. He has mastered the complex geometries of organic chemistry through modifying the conventions used to portray the 3D relationships between atoms. And on top of that he’s a world-class singer, having graduated from Prayag Sangit Samiti.But just two years ago, Kartik’s prospects were quite a bit bleaker. Then, he was in the middle of petitioning a bemused and skeptical Chairman of Delhi’s Central Board of Secondary Education for the right to study science and math. Across nearly all of India, blind students are prohibited from taking the science and math track during high school. Adequate resources are nearly nonexistent and skilled mentors are hard to find. But the most important impediment for high-achieving blind students is the pervasive prejudice and lack of awareness that characterizes the vast majority of India’s educational system. In Kartik’s case, for instance, the special schools in Delhi that do cater to blind students called his dream “an impossible affair”. As Kartik put it to me, the consensus is that blind students should be taught basket weaving – not biomedical engineering.

Finally, after a dozen letters and months of persuasion, fervent appeals and petitions, the Board issued a circular that allowed Kartik, and all visually challenged students in Delhi, to opt for the sciences. But his success was fleeting. Kartik was soon told that the best engineering schools in India, the revered IITs, lacked the adequate resources for blind students and didn’t even consider them suitable candidates.

In the middle of his 12th standard, Kartik was referred to Avanti by Retina India, an Indian nonprofit that works to empower the visually impaired. It was at this point that I met Kartik. After graduating from Yale in May and moving to Delhi in July 2012, I was looking to continue my volunteer work in education. Avanti, with its forward-looking approach to expanding access to higher education, was a natural fit for me. I began working on a strategy to help Avanti’s students apply to U.S. universities for the 2013-2014 cycle. When I met Kartik, however, everything had to be accelerated since his applications were due in mere months.

Taylor Gregore-Wright is a volunteer at Avanti and has been leading our work helping high potential students gain admission to top US and Candadian Colleges

Working through Avanti, I helped Kartik navigate the application process for several top-tier U.S. universities. I engaged Kartik in a high-touch manner that let him take the lead and receiving guidance when he needed it. “Reflecting on the entire application process,” Kartik said, “I feel that the best part was the way you would encourage me to think for my own self, rather than simply telling me what was to be written.” At the same time, he admits he would have struggled to understand just what the American applications were looking for, especially in the essay component. Understanding the financial aid procedures was also challenging, but I’m relieved to say that Kartik received a full scholarship to attend Stanford.

Asked what he took away from the whole application process, Kartik replied, “I was surprised. I had never reflected as much about myself as those essays required me to. I learned a lot about who I am.” His experiences, he says, has “galvanized my vision for a more equitable society where everyone has the same chances”.

In the coming months, Avanti will continue to expand educational opportunities for bright, disadvantaged Indian students. Next year, we intend to help multiple students apply to elite U.S. universities in addition to those in India. Personally, I’m humbled by the drive, optimism and intellect that characterize Avanti’s students, and I’m grateful to get the chance to work with them.

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Our Fellow Search – Joys & Furys – Part II

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Deepak Maun, our Program Manager in Kanpur recently had an amazing experience in the process of our search for students…

These days, I am in Kanpur. I am setting up the Learning Centre (LC) and helping the IITK team with home interviews. Today, I went to interview a girl who lives in a locality at quite a distance from our LC location. After having interacted with a prospective student (academic review) and the student’s parents, the IITK team ranks every student on 2 parameters -  a) Academics: A1-A5 (A5 being the best ranking) b) Financials: F1-F5 (F5 being financially most needy)

Along with this, the team gives multiple comments that give the interviewer a fair idea of the points to focus on. This girl was given A5-F5 rating. Her parents are illiterate and work as potters, making clay items and selling them, earning barely 2500-3000 per month. They are 4 brothers and sisters. During her interview at IITK, she had said that it would be tough to join because of distance if centre comes up at Rawatpur (the location we finalized). Since I knew she was A5-F5, I went for the interview with just 2 aims – a) check her motivation level and b) convince her (and more importantly her family) to come to LC despite the distance.

During the interview, I found out that she is in a very low grade school as her family could not afford better schools. She would need help with English as her school is Hindi Medium. Most of all, forget about approx. 900 Rs. / month for LC, she cannot afford even the 35-40 Rs. / day required for travelling to the LC. Having judged her motivation level and the financial condition of her family, I decided then and there to get her into a better school, recommend her for full fee waiver at Avanti and even give her extra money for daily travel.

I convinced her family about sending their daughter to LC and asked her brother to look for some better schools in the neighborhood and inform me. I was thinking of ways in which I could help her. The thing on top of my mind was asking my colleagues from Marico to provide some amount for her support. I was planning to write an e-mail. All this while I was returning to IITK campus, which is where I am staying.

Then something unbelievable happened.

I received a call from one of my friends, while I was walking towards hostel and we were discussing things in general. Then he mentioned that on his sons birthday, his wife has pledged to give Rs. 50,000 from their income to someone in need. He asked me if I knew someone who really needs that money.

I was amazed. I did a quick calculation and I guessed this would be sufficient to help this girl get into a better school (2yrs fees + uniform/books/stationary) plus her travel expenses for 2 yrs. I told him YES I KNOW A GIRL WHO NEEDS THIS MONEY.

I just need to convince his wife about this case but I guess I can do that. The remaining is logistics. This was a lovely moment for me. Somehow, things just fit in. Somehow, you find ways. Somehow, dots get connected. I am overwhelmed at the moment. Happy. More happy than I have ever been in life.

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Our Fellow Search – Joys & Furys – Part I

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Abbas Dadla tells us about the joys and fury’s associated with the search for the motivated & deserving gems for our learning centers in Mumbai

The past months have been intense (and that’s an understatement). We’ve set ourselves the very ambitious goal of finding over 150 deserving students in Std X across Mumbai to be a part of our program. In order to do this, Anitha (our outreach champion in Mumbai) and a group of determined volunteers are busy interviewing students and parents at the frequency of more than 1 interview per day. They will visit over 200 low-income schools to test over 2,000 students to shortlist the 200 to be interviewed! Phew. Hats off to you, team.

This is my third year being involved with this process (I started as a student mentor at IIT Bombay). On most days the students we meet and the stories we hear are truly inspiring. Most of our students are first-generation learners. Their parents work day and night as rickshaw drivers, carpenters, watchmen, and daily wage earners to provide for their students who consistently stand first in school and carry their hopes and aspirations. These children are already winners well before Avanti has even met them. I feel a sense of victory, knowing that the attitude in low-income households where one child extra meant one more rupee earned has changed. Knowing that these families view a quality education as their route out of poverty.

The families we work with spend more than 20% of their annual income educating their students. This often means sacrificing the butter on the bread. And then there are days like today – when in a reflection of what’s worst about India – we feel cheated. I write this to talk about a peculiar interview that caught my attention, and created this urged to write.

I was in our Powai office when a girl from Std X came in for an interview with her elder brother. I interviewed her brother, to verify the income criteria (<2.5 lakh per annum), while Anitha spent time with the girl to understand her aptitude and motivation.

The brother spun quite a story. He convinced me how the family ration shop is only making ends meet, and pretended to show me a list on his phone of the debts he owes his friends for his younger brother’s engineering fees. I realized that a home visit would be necessary, in order to gauge their living standards.

Meanwhile, in Anitha’s interview with the girl student, an entirely different story unfolded. On prodding and asking the right questions, Anitha learnt that the father has recently purchased a shop for over 50 lakh, and spent over 4 lakh on her elder brother’s wedding. But that isn’t the shocking part. On asking her about her career ambition, she said she wants to become a pharmacist. However, she had absolutely no basis for the choice. Sensing that Anitha was not impressed, she confessed that her father very strongly plans to get her married as soon as she becomes 18.

She continually tops her class, and is very keen to study. At this crossroads, the father ‘agreed’ to allow her to study, under the condition that she only study pharmacy. Once she gets her ‘certificate’, he will then use it to start a pharmacy shop, which he will then give out on rent. Thanks for the certificate kid. But you’re married now, and you have kids, so look after them instead.

We deal with a lot of lies in our line of work. Most times it’s a lower-middle-class family that can’t afford expensive coaching classes trying to find an affordable option. The lies alone don’t make me angry. What’s truly infuriating here is that the family lied because they wanted to weasel out of paying to educate their daughter. Worse still they made her lie to acquire the means to a degree she would never be allowed to use. The misogyny embedded in this act is almost unbearable.

We didn’t take the child into our program. She is meritorious but her family has the means to pay for her education. We hope they do.

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A month for retreats!

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11 November 2012, Krishna Ramkumar

It’s been a little over 2.5 years since that fateful telephonic conversation I had with Akshay that left me with 2 options: a) take $25,000 and do something useful with it, or b) continue to live the good life and quit whining about it. The ensuing ride has been exhilarating, draining and confusing in equal measure.

The critic would accuse us of having been all over the place. North India and south India. Urban India and rural India. Engineering and medical entrance exam prep. Online learning and classroom lecturing. Residential programs and after-school programs. Volunteer-run operations and full-time employees. But if you’re one who views the glass as half-full, you’d argue (as I do) that the first 2 years were well-spent understanding the problem and piloting potential solutions. Either way, the time was ripe for introspection and brainstorming.

The classroom in the stream

So when Conceptum Education‘s Stuti phoned me in late September to invite the entire IIT Roorkee Avanti team to a weekend retreat in Uttarakhand’s mesmerisingly beautiful mountains, I couldn’t believe my luck. A few frantic emails and calls later, a plan was in place. I had convinced a bunch of IITians to wake up at 6.00 on a Saturday morning and catch a 3 hour bus ride to a place with no internet and no telephone network! The only comforting thought – bathing for the next 2 days would be a luxury.

The venue for our retreat was Apna Ghar – an incredibly scenic mountain which is the testing ground for the Boundaryless Multiversity, a miniature model of a world without boundaries and hence devoid of conflict. Our gracious host – IIT-D ’86 alum and IRS Officer, Munesh Kumar in our interactions lamented the present economic model that has made people more interested in accumulating wealth than ‘experiencing life’ and has created a world where the rich are destined to become richer while the poor become poorer. He said only half in jest that in post-industrial cities, people are capable of producing only 2 things – babies and waste! The all-night long Hasya Kami Sammelan served as the ideal tonic for our discussions the next day with the added bonus of providing me a crash course in Urdu and poetry.

We’ve been incredibly fortunate to have Conceptum Education as our partner organization in Roorkee. Shishir and Stuti run CE with the same ideals that we started Avanti, so much so that I keep telling Stuti that she is Avanti’s only full-time volunteer. At the retreat, we co-developed a roadmap for Avanti’s Roorkee operations and shared our respective memorable Avanti experiences. My personal favorite was the time when one of our fellows phoned his poor mentor at 5 in the morning to ask him his Physics doubts!

If ever there was an activity designed for team-building

Inspired by the success of the Roorkee retreat, we promptly organised our first retreat in 2 years for our full-time team. With 11 people spread across 4 locations across India, we had increasingly begun to feel the need for a joint visioning exercise and thanks to the combination of non-fussy employees who did 24-hour train journeys and generous donors, we managed to organise the ultimate camping expedition in Kolad. Hopefully, the fruits of this will be borne over the next 12 months as we add structure and rigour to our work.

Happy Diwali everyone!

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Dream chasers at Avanti’s Learning Centers

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Grace Devadoss who has recently joined as Avanti’s Center Manager in the Chennai Corporation Schools program writes about her experiences thus far.

I couldn’t be more excited – walking into my first job, meeting new people, a whole new world in front of me! Avanti Fellows is my first step of adventure into the world of the social development. My month long stay at Avanti has given me not only simple happiness but also a meaning and zest for life – I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that I see my role with Avanti as something much more than just a job!

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Run for Avanti – Next up – 10th Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon!

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Run for Avanti – Why and What?

Because we’re trying to Bridge India’s Educational Divide.

A majority of marathon runners around the world help raise funds for a cause – and a lot of it. The Virgin London Marathon raises Rs. 250 crores every year. In India, the previous Standard CharteredMumbai Marathonraised Rs. 12 crores and the previous Airtel Delhi Half Marathon raised Rs. 3.3 crores.

 

 

Avanti Fellows is participating in the following marathons

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