After so many days came up with my experience during visit to CHORD school. This school is run by some NGO in Bachupally. They are providing free education to the poor children or semi-orphans upto 12th standard. I like the way they take the initiation to provide help to the needy. Every time I see the children begging near traffic signals or near some gates I feel can I make any difference to them.Earlier I used to think that I should have some power or authority to offer help to them. But now after visiting couple of schools (NICE school in Guntur district and Bachupally school) I came to know that we don't need any authority to offer help. The only two things we need is heart to help the needy and determination to help them. With these we can extend our hand to help them. They are not different from us. They are also human beings and they too have right to live their lives as they want. The life they are spending on roads is not because of their choice. Owww.. I have gone too far. Coming back to our visit to CHORD school.
The person named Suman who is among the board members running the school contacted our corporate to extend the help to the children. Students in +1 and +2 don't have full time English teacher. Also they need to improve in communication skills since after 12th standard they have to go out and seek the job appropriate to that level of education. We planned some activities for 2 hours like small introductory session, games related to communication etc.
Seven of us from our office (different groups) visited the school on Saturday i.e. 23rd Jul. The school is in 4-storey building. It is residential school. Suman talked to us first in his office and told about the students, their drawbacks, what they needed and how we can help them. Later he clubbed the students of 11th standard and 12th standard. I observed that many of them were not wearing slippers. Many were shy. Looking at us they were whispering among themselves.
Small introductory session was given by Rajesh(my teammate).
We selected few students and asked them to give brief introduction of their best friends. It was fun. One of the two friends is confident and one is shy. For some the friends even their favourite actors are same :). We observed their introduction, asked them to repeat the introduction with few corrections. Next we introduced ourselves and asked our names again. Rajesh's name was heard loudly :). The next activity was Jumbled Words. We divided 40 students into four groups A,B,C and D.I wrote the words jumbled and asked each group. Very few were active but they were helping their teammate in finding out the word. It went for one hour.
Their mentor asked to take a break. But they were shouting that they don't want break. We felt happy at least we could keep up their interest with our activities. Even though they didn't want the break we took 10 minutes break.After break we gave jumbled sentences. They answered many of them. Last activity was Dumb Charades. Paromita explained them how to play like how to show English, Telugu or Hindi word, how many words etc. They found difficulty in the first query. It was Lion's Tail. I showed it to them. I love this game and I am good at this one.
I hesitated to act in front of our colleagues and students. But then I thought I came here to make them speak confidently and to teach them how to overcome shyness and now I am hesitating, I should not feel shy or hesitate in the first place. So, I signalled the word to them. They found the word with few attempts. Later we gave couple of words and they enjoyed the game. Their mentor came to remind us that time was over. He picked of couple of guys to come up in front of the class and introduce themselves to each other. They were tough guys. 
It took 15 minutes for us to make them ask each other's names. Later we sent back them to their places without completing their introduction. It happens like that in such schools. Few will be active. Many of the students in villages feel shy to speak in front of the audience. We appreciated the active guys in each team. I must mention girls team scored high :).At the end we talked with Suman. He got excited about fund collection. I must not mention that stuff. Overall the visit was awesome. We planned some activities for next weekend. We are planning to make these visits valuable and useful to them. They have to overcome their shyness now itself since they have to look for the jobs immediately after 12th standard. Most of them can't go for graduation. If we make them to build their communication skills then we would be able to make some difference as I mentioned in first para.
Will post more updates on the activities in the coming weekends :)
