Monday 10th August

I am now in Goa and it is definately different to Mumbai. It is much quieter, less crowded and much cleaner. Amazingly, a group from Woking have been out here working in the school and the children's homes - small world! They leave tomorrow. Today I spent the morning at the school which is run by Beena (Biju's sister) and her husband Martin. The school was only started 3 months ago and they are very keen for me to advise them on really getting it up and running. I watched most of the teachers this morning and made some notes on the good points and things that could be improved. Tomorrow, I will have the chance to sit down with the teachers and talk through what I have observed. There is no behaviour strategy in place or rules and I know that is something the teacher really want to talk about so we will try and work on that. The content of the lessons I saw was generally ok but the English is still heavily waited towards capital letters and they are just starting to look into phonics.

I sat down with a few of the older children and work with them on som maths and I notice that many of them have poor mental maths skills. They struggle to work out very simple additions in their head but if you write it down they can do it. The children are split into age groups for lessons and each class has about 12 pupils in it. The school is set up just for the children in the homes however there are a few of the children that go to the local governement school. In the afternoon I got to spend some time in one of the boys homes. They children in this home range from 11 - 16. Many of children have parents who are HIV + or drug addicts, some have no parents, some have been rescued from the streets and some have suffered abuse and neglect. They are such great kids. They are very welcoming and friendly and some of them speak good English. I stayed and played some games with them during their free time and one of the boys even gave me guitar lessons. He taught me three chords so we will continue the lesson next time I visit them. I am hoping over the next few day to get the life stories of some of the children to give you an idea of the life they have been rescued from. I did not take many photos today and I want to just settle and meet the staff and children. I've included a couple of photos from the boys home I visited. One is a group photo with the team from Woking.