Friday 15th May

We are hoping to put together a documentry on 'Vision Rescues' work but focusing on the staff. We have been blown away by the way the staff have looked after us out hear and they work so hard - we felt we wanted to show this side of the work! We had a cameraman working with us all day trying to take various shots of the staff and the work. We started out at Marhim Creek where the drug addicts hang out. They have a counselling session on the bus and they are then fed. The couselling and feeding work is all done by men at this location as some of the men can get aggressive. Thankfully, there were no problems while we were there. We then moved onto Bandra slum (famous for its connections with 'Slumdog Millionaire) where we filmed the teaching and the feeding of the children there. Again, we tried to focus on the work that the workers / teachers do. The kids loved the camera and they eventually were able just to ignore the filming that was going on. It is always hard taking photos and videos as you want to try and capture the reality of what the slums are like but at the same time you want to have respect for the people that live there. It is their home and they are entitled to privacy. Having said that many of them ask for their photo to be taken so it eases the pressure slightly. After filming at Bandra, we needed to capture some footage of the local shopping mall to get to the contrast betwwen the wealth and the poverty. Whilst filming outside the mall, we were approach by a group of 6 begging children. They simply do not leave you alone but we gave them nothing as they need to be encouraged not to beg. We decided to show they show clapping games and different hand shake greetings. Their attention was instantly diverted away from begging and onto the entertainment that we were creating. Unfortunately we did not see the man who suddenly approached and hit one of the children hard on the back (This is part of the discipline culture in India!) Caron pulled the children away and I gave the man a talking to. He thought we were giving them money and like most people, the children are seen as pests. By this time the cameraman had finished filming and we then walk back to the Vision Rescue head office. Back at the office I had a chance to chat to Biju about the lessons I had observed the day before and my ideas for improving the education. He is very keen to get many of these ideas up and running as soon as possible so he has arranged for me to discuss the education and curriculum with his wife who currently heads up that side of the project. An eventful day! It will be interesting to see how the video footage come out and I can now start implementing some changes to the educational program.