Friday 31st July

Slum at Wadala

Albaz inventing his own game of badminton

The new location - Majid Bunda

Today has been a very long day! I set of at 8.30am and travelled by taxi to Mahim with Mang. Lots of the children at Mahim are still out the city so the first main stop for the bus was Bandra. Here, Rajesh and I met with an English lady who was currently in Mumbai with her family and she wanted to come and see the work of Vision Rescue. Today was maths and Manoj was teaching the children to count up in twos. This was a good opportunity to use my newest skill of counting from 1-10 in Hindi. I sat with one lad who was Ok up to 12 but then struggled. I tried helping him every so often but as I did not know the Hindi for numbers above ten, I had talk to him about the order of the digits. From here he could work out the next number. Eventually, he managed to write in twos up to 50 - a great achievement!! There was a similar situation at MMRDA and again I used the same strategy as I did at Bandra to help a couple of children who were struggling. One child was not able to write the numbers one to ten so he needed some help forming the number shapes. Eventually, he wrote 1-5 on his own.
Lunch was taken, as usual, at the Mahim kitchen where I had the opportunity to partake in some badminton with the local kids. The racquets were small plastic racquets but we did use a shuttlecock, even though it was very old and tatty. Despite the equipment, it was very enjoyable and soon some of the other Vision Rescue staff were joining in. I wasn't totally sure of the rules, which Albaz had made up, but I just accepted it when I was told my shot was in or out. I did have a few problems with overhanging trees but seemed to be let off every time I hit them.
After a great badminton session I boarded the bus for the evening shift. The first location is Wadala. Ishwa, who teaches on the evening shift, was teaching the numbers 1 - 20 but getting the children to fill in missing numbers. Here, I experienced both extremes of children. Again, one child was unable to write any numbers, so by holding the chalk with her I helped her to form the numbers correctly. One boy, who attends an English speaking school, had already completed the task before Ishwa had finished explaining it. I observed while Ishwa gave him an extension exercise. He then completed this very quickly. He is obviously much brighter than all the other pupils who come on the bus but he is so enthusiastic to learn that they allow him to stay. I stepped in and went through some times tables questions with him. We got onto the 9 times table which he completed but it needed much more thinking power, so he was being challenged. I then showed him how to work out the nine times table using only your fingers. This was only possible because his English is quite good otherwise I would not have been able to explain it to him. I am not sure he totally understood the first time but eventually he followed the method and was then able to give me the answers by using his fingers. Another mathematical success!!
Onto Reay Road where I met up with Ommo. She is working for a few days in India but used to live in England and came along to see the work on the buses. It was great to see the children still wearing their red t-shirts, although some of them have lost them already I told Ishwa that I thought it was still important that they were allowed on the bus. I noticed that there were a lot more older children around than usual and perhaps this is a potential area to start some sports coaching. As this was Ommo's first experience of the slums, the cameras were out and Ommo even tried her hand at serving the food. After Reay Road, I was expecting to go onto VT station but this location has stop because the drug addicts have moved from this area. Instead, they now have another teaching location at Majid Bundar. I have not met these kids yet so it was a new experience. There were only about 20 children on the bus but they were very active children. These children are much harder to teach and are not as well behaved or as focused as the others. I also noticed that they were more physical towards each other. I think this is one location I will need to visit a few times and see what strategies we can put in place to help improve their concentration and behaviour. After the feeding at Majid Bundar, we headed back to the kitchen at Mahim where we had dinner and I got caught up in the middle of a game of tag which the kids were playing. This version of tag involved throwing a home-made ball at each other to tag them. On a number of occasions, I was used as a hiding place and had to avoid being hit. Today was very tiring but extremely rewarding and very enjoyable. Over the weekend I will be preparing for the first of the teacher training sessions on Monday.

Thursday 30th July

On Thursday I took a break from the buses and after a lazy start to the day, I headed over to the office for an 11.30 meeting with Secu. He we discuss the whole education program and the next series of teacher training sessions that I would be running. We also talked about the new workbooks that we are having printed for the children on the buses. We are hoping to get these printed in the next couple of weeks once the final design has been discussed with the printer. I will be running 3 teacher training sessions a week until the end of August and most of these will be training the teachers in the new phonics programme.

Tuesday 28th July

A group of Students

Arif - he is blind in one eye

The day started at 8.30am. I caught a taxi from Goregaon to Mahim and arrived at the kitchen in time to join the 2nd bus. Today was English teaching so I was particularly interested to see if phonics was being taught. Sonita was teaching on this bus and I am glad to say that she didn't disappoint me. At Kurla (location 1 ),the children have been practicing the letters a-p so today she wanted them to practise writing them. She recapped over the names of the letters and the sounds and then the children wrote the letters on their boards. I was hoping she would go on to write some words but she didn't - maybe a lesson for next time! Again, it was so good to see the children really trying hard to write the letters correctly and to sound out each letter. They are lovely children at Kurla and you may remember this is where I helped little Manoj with his foot injury. Unfortunately, he was not on the bus today so I will try and catch up with him another day. We then moved on to Vision Rescue's newest location, which is on the other side of Kurla. This new site was recommended to Rajesh by Cathy, who is an English mission worker out in Mumbai. She lives right next door to the slum and spends most of her days with the families, helping to look after the children and attending to their needs. She arrived with some of the children at the bus so I spent some time chatting to her about her work. She was telling me about one of the boys, Arif, who is pictured above. Arif is six years old and when he was two, he got acid put in his eyes and he is now blind is one eye and partially blind in the other. Cathy said that he is often sent out by his parents to beg. Unfortunately, the doctors have said that they cannot do anything to help his sight and if they did then there may be a risk of him losing the little sight that he has left. He is a lovely little kid and even though he couldn't see the picture, he loved having his photo taken. I also treated him to a Murray Mint! There is a lot of need in this area and Cathy says that some of the parents are quite violent towards their children and beat them. It still happens a lot in Mumbai the children are often helpless to do anything about it. As this is a new location the children were still working on learning the beginning of the alphabet but they were so enthusiastic to learn. They love being on the bus and I guess for some of them it is a welcome relief from the normal activities in the slum. I also met a group of students who insisted on taking my picture. I returned the favour and you can see the result above. They were on their way to distribute advertising boards for 'Loop' mobile phones.
After Kurla, the bus continued onto Deonar but I returned back to Mahim to meet Rajesh. We needed to go and by resources for the children to do their Christmas artwork. I had already brought over some donated colouring pencils but we were specifically on the hunt for felt tip pens and art paper. The hassle we went through to find some coloured pens! We did eventually find some and managed to get the paper we wanted as well. We headed back to the kitchen for some lunch and met some of the usual kitchen children. I decided to give them a lesson on balancing sticks on their noses but I think they will need a bit more practice. Hopefully a couple of the teachers will be returning next week so tomorrow I will start preparing the next few teacher training sessions.

Tuesday 28th July

The day started at 8.30am. I caught a taxi from Goregaon to Mahim and arrived at the kitchen in time to join the 2nd bus. Today was English teaching so I was particularly interested to see if phonics was being taught. Sonita was teaching on this bus and I am glad to say that she didn't disappoint me. At Kurla (location 1 ),the children have been practicing the letters a-p so today she wanted them to practise writing them. She recapped over the names of the letters and the sounds and then the children wrote the letters on their boards. I was hoping she would go on to write some words but she didn't - maybe a lesson for next time! Again, it was so good to see the children really trying hard to write the letters correctly and to sound out each letter. They are lovely children at Kurla and you may remember this is where I helped little Manoj with his foot injury. Unfortunately, he was not on the bus today so I will try and catch up with him another day. We then moved on to Vision Rescue's newest location, which is on the other side of Kurla. This new site was recommended to Rajesh by Cathy, who is an English mission worker out in Mumbai. She lives right next door to the slum and spends most of her days with the families, helping to look after the children and attending to their needs. She arrived with some of the children at the bus so I spent some time chatting to her about her work. She was telling me about one of the boys, Arif, who is pictured above. Arif is six years old and when he was two, he got acid put in his eyes and he is now blind is one eye and partially blind in the other. Cathy said that he is often sent out by his parents to beg. Unfortunately, the doctors have said that they cannot do anything to help his sight and if they did then there may be a risk of him losing the little sight that he has left. He is a lovely little kid and even though he couldn't see the picture, he loved having his photo taken. I also treated him to a Murray Mint! There is a lot of need in this area and Cathy says that some of the parents are quite violent towards their children and beat them. It still happens a lot in Mumbai the children are often helpless to do anything about it. As this is a new location the children were still working on learning the beginning of the alphabet but they were so enthusiastic to learn. They love being on the bus and I guess for some of them it is a welcome relief from the normal activities in the slum. I also met a group of students who insisted on taking my picture. I returned the favour and you can see the result above. They were on their way to distribute advertising boards for 'Loop' mobile phones.
After Kurla, the bus continued onto Deonar but I returned back to Mahim to meet Rajesh. We needed to go and by resources for the children to do their Christmas artwork. I had already brought over some donated colouring pencils but we were specifically on the hunt for felt tip pens and art paper. The hassle we went through to find some coloured pens! We did eventually find some and managed to get the paper we wanted as well. We headed back to the kitchen for some lunch and met some of the usual kitchen children. I decided to give them a lesson on balancing sticks on their noses but I think they will need a bit more practice. Hopefully a couple of the teachers will be returning next week so tomorrow I will start preparing the next few teacher training sessions.

Monday 27th July

Yesterday I had the opportunity to sit down with Biju and and Secu and talk about my next stint in India and my ideas for developing the teaching. Biju outlined his vision and there are lots of exciting ideas in the pipeline. Improving the teaching of English is one of my main objective whilst I am here and I have the support of Debbie Hepplewhite ( Creator of Phonics international) back in England who has kindly agreed to help me out with ideas and resources for teaching phonics. She has also put me in touch with Don from 'Ray of Hope' who provides new resources and equipment for projects in third world countries. He is kindly sending me over £1000 worth of new teaching resources. Also, we are going to get new workbook printed for the children to use on the buses. These will have pages for English, Maths and Hindi. Once these arrive I will be able to take the staff through how they should be used. Chelsea FC kindly gave me one of last year's academy kits whilst I was in England so I will be hoping to give this out to the street kids who have been part of the football we have started. Unfortunately, many of them are out of Mumbai currently because of the rain. They should be returning shortly.

Some of you will remember the cards that were designed by the children that I was selling back in England. We are looking into producing cards and gifts for Christmas, all design but the street children. I will keep you posted on this, so if you are thinking of buying your Christmas cards, wrapping paper and new calendars please wait!!!

Today I was in Mahim with the bus. There were a few technical problems at the start of the day as the bus developed a gas leak. The teaching had to be put on hold for the day but a van was hired so that the feeding could still take place at each of the locations. Fortunately a mechanic was able to come out and fix the problem so the bus will be back up and running tomorrow. After lunch at the kitchen, I then met up with my friend Amin in Bandra. He was able to meet Rajesh and learn more about the work of Vision Rescue. He is going to arrange for me to look around the orphanage where he grew up and for me to see the good work that is going on there. The rest of the day was spent at the office discussing the printing of the workbooks and the possible Christmas card range. Tomorrow I will be on bus number two giving me a chance to visit the new location. The photos are of children from MMRDA which I took on Saturday.

Back in India

After a 9 hour fairly bumpy flight, I arrived back in yesterday morning. The flight was made fairly amusing by the funny Indian man from Leeds that was sitting next to me. He was listening to an Indian radio station for most of the journey an couldn't resist singing along every so often.
Rajesh picked me up from the airport and we headed to the college, where I am staying, to drop my bags off. The rest of the day was spent at the office saying hi to everyone and then a bit of shopping for food and toiletries. Just as we left the office for the shopping centre, the skies opened and I got the first taste of the Indian rain season and out came the waterproof coat. The rain causes lots of flooding and ruins the roads as it washes away all the stones and creates loads of pot holes. I've been reliably informed that in August the rain is not as frequent and becomes lighter - we will wait and see!

This morning myself and Rajesh headed of to Mahim to meet the teaching and kitchen staff. He informed me that 4 of the teachers are not available at the moment due to illnesses. Hopefully they will return shortly and we can crack on with the teacher training. The heavy rain means that some of the street children and their families move out of the city for better shelter but they return when it is drier. For this reason, there were not as many children on the bus as usual so the feeding is a lot quicker. No football today due to the wet weather and only a few street children were around. When we moved on to Mahim Creek, Rajesh informed me that they are not able to feed the drug addicts at the moment because the Police have stopped them thinking that it is encouraging more drug addicts to the area. Vision Rescue have been giving permission by the Indian Charities Council but they have to give proof to the police before they will allow Vision Rescue to start feeding again. I was hoping that the morning would be more successful when we reached Bandra, and it was. The bus was full and Manoj taught a good maths lesson. I was observing some children at the back of the bus and quickly became aware that they were unable to write the numbers 1 - 10. A few of them needed help forming the letters and some just couldn't rememeber the order. With one boy, I initially held the piece of chalk with him and helped him form the letters. We did this twice and then he had a go himself and eventually he was able to write all ten numbers. He was so pleased!! He got a sticker for his effort and we will practice again next maths lesson. It also helped me because I can now can to ten in Hindi! After Bandra, we headed for lunch at the kitchen. I then travelled with the bus to the final afternoon location, MMRA, for another maths lesson. The children are slightly brighter and many know the numbers up to 100. It was a very quite day but with a very rewarding maths lesson. Tomorrow is games / DVD day on the buses and myself and Rajesh will also be viewing a few properties that could be used as a new kitchen.