Support a Rural School in the Himalayas

Teachers of Aarohi Bal Sansar recently attended a ' Research Based Training' organised by Madhuvan Ashram, Ramgarh. This training was attended by twelve other schools from the nearby areas. 

Some of the highlights of the workshop were

• The best part about this week long training was the routine which included Yoga, Meditation, Self Reflection and Shramdaan.  It is important for a teacher to revisit and reinforce personal goals everyday, leading to self-growth. 
• Holistic Development- It is important that a child, not only grows physically but also becomes mentally and emotionally healthy. Hence certain exercises around improving and understanding senses, expressing emotions and building imagination were conducted.
• Activity based learning- Making abstract subject like mathematics interesting and relatable through various exercises were taught. Scientific understanding could be done extremely well through facilitating simple experiments from around the child's environment. 

As per the government guidelines, we are looking forward to resume classes at Aarohi Bal Sansar from Aug 18, 2021. The team is excited to meet the students. 

Because of the worldwide pandemic schools have been shut since March 2020. Various mediums of teaching like whatsapp videos and chats, video and audio calls, home visits, google tools etc.  were tried and tested during this period. Finally, after much planning, deliberation and as per the government guidelines, Aarohi Bal sansar resumed its functioning from the last week of february. The school reopened to a fun-filled science event for kids. First few days of school were dedicated to preparing science activities. Celebration took place on ‘Science Day’.  A Kids 'Theatre and Dance festival' also took place at Aarohi amphitheatre. Kids from Happy Children’s Library, Village Seem put up some performances- Indian classical dance and theatre. The kids went through a series of process-oriented drama classes stretched over a period of four months. Various exercises on body language, voice modulation etc. were conducted under this initiative. On the day of culmination, the kids presented themselves confidently  in front of an audience from the community.  

Hello Friends, 

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic across the world, education has been indirectly affected in many parts of the world, especially rural areas. Various online teaching trials and initiatives have been witnessed. Aarohi ‘s education team also conducted an e-learning intervention starting April 2020. Having run the project for six months, an online rapid assessment was conducted by the team to study the challenges caused by the epidemic, measures taken towards them and efficiency of the intervention, focusing on Himalayan learners from surrounding villages.

Here are some highlights from our study reflecting our e-learning initiative during the period Jul-Dec 2020. 

Looking forward to your support and collaboration towards narrowing learning loss in the Himalayas.

• GG_ABS_Report_Dec_2020.pdf (PDF)
  

Namaste,

Attached is a brief report on our activities of our rural school during the period January to June 2020. There were many interesting things that happened at ABS during this period. However, towards the end of this academic year 2019-20, with the COVID-19 pandemic, our activities needed a fresh way of looking at things.This period has been a time for reflection, building our capacities and being hopeful of things to come for our children and their education.

We thank each one of you for your support and contribution, without whom we would not have been able to achieve whatever we have today.

Best,

Team Aarohi

• Support_a_Rural_schoolGG_ReportJune_2020.docx (DOCX)

Clubs formation:

We started four clubs at ABS from November 2019 with the following objectives:

1. The idea of creating 'School Clubs' originated while discussing solutions to aspects of Creative Teaching-Learning at ABS. 

2. These School Clubs shall provide a free and open platform to kids in fields of their choice and interest. Through these clubs we look forward to witness 'learning outside Classrooms'. 

 The clubs we formed and the activities we carried out are given as follows:

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) - This club is related to research, developing stuff using waste materials. The club promotes the interest of science among students. It engages its members with hands-on experiments and a supportive environment to bring their ideas to life. The aim of the club is to apply science not just within the curriculum as it connects students to the science community outside school. The children have so far tinkered successfully with making a ‘’robotic hand’’ and a ‘’ light bulb’’.

Movie – In this club, the children watch inspiring and informational movies and then discuss the highlights of the movie. Movie clubs improve young children’s imagination and creativity as it also improves speaking, listening discussion and social skills. The children then write their own review of the film and this can really help their analytical skills. They watched movies such as ‘’Madagascar’’, ‘’Nil, Battey Sannata’’ and ‘’Coco’’.

Theatre - This is the club for all theatre enthusiasts. The club envisages developing the self-confidence of the child, improving his/her presentation skills, enhancing his/her public speaking abilities and providing an insight into various characters which he gets to enact. It provides much more than just academics and fills his/her life with imagination and dreams.

In this club, the children did role plays of characters in a hospital, railway station, bus stand, school – they learnt nuances of emotions, speech and acting. They entertained their audience with funny skits and drama! 

Cooking – A variety of food dishes have been created in this club to teach children names of pulses, herbs, spices and nutrition. Cooking with kids is a great way to educate them about good nutrition, what’s in season, planning and preparing meals, and reading food labels. It can encourage them to eat healthy foods, especially ones they may normally refuse to try. The children made a variety of dishes including soups and omelettes.

• GGSupport_a_rural_school_July_to_Dec_2019_report.docx (DOCX)