Aaranyak: A Rural Alternative Learning Space

Aaranyak:

These past months have been quite busy for us at Dediapada. Our work has grown and with vacation we were able to take it to the next level as well.

Vacation Camp:

Children have numerous talents and interests which can be seen when they get exposure. Nevertheless, those things always come to a halt in their normal days but when they get holidays then they have ample time to discover the treasure inside them, and to help children find out their ability and knowledge on multiple things, we planned summer camps for children of Dediapada, Narmada district, Gujarat with children from 14 villages where children were getting hands-on experiences on a lot of diverse topics such as science experiments, working models of human body parts, paper crafts, distinct kind of arts such as salt art, spray painting, blow art, photo frame, movie screening and enhancement of their community knowledge through community mapping and community treasure hunt.

Summer camp began on May 5th, 2022, and ended on June 12th, 2022. A golden opportunity for children and team members to keep up with the spirit of excitement for the camp in the scorching summer yet a cool camp with a bunch of children and activities.

One of the main objectives of this camp was to protect children from not getting involved in child labor because schools were closed and there is a high risk that children will go into child labor. To make this vacation useful for children through which they can utilize the time to gain knowledge. Our facilitators spend four hours with children every day to make summer vacation interesting and enjoyable for them and they were involved in many activities such as community mapping (children were divided into a group and were asked to map their community, through this children get to know more about their village’s geography, it has helped them to discover new places and has built new skills in them to know about directions and how to draw on paper), treasure hunt (in this children were paired in groups to find out the treasures of their community, they had set of questions with them and with the help of those questions they have to find a suitable person from their community and after finding that person they have to talk to them and ask related questions about their profession, etc.). Apart from community involvement children learned more about science at learning points where facilitators do activities with them on volcano eruptions, lava lamps, object reflection, and many more. They also learned about kitchen science, children did creativity through paperwork and they also get to know little about the universe and did hands-on practice on diverse working models such as a model of day & night, solar and lunar eclipse, and of course, dancing and singing were also incorporated in this camp where children and facilitators sang songs and dance on Abhiyan geet and their traditional dance form ‘Timli’.

This camp is a whole lot of magic package because children were getting an education on different subjects playfully simultaneously they learned about themselves even more. Now, they know about their capabilities which have been enhanced during the vacation. Those children who had come for the camp enjoyed it thoroughly. In addition to this, children who live in hostels had come to their homes for such a long time, they also used to come to the learning points and did the activities.

Summer camp ended with a showcase of children from 14 villages where parents, panchayat members, and Sarpanch of the village were invited to show them what their children have learned these days from the mouth of their kids in such a large gathering with many people from the villages.

Coming to the activities which children have done on a daily and weekly basis is enormous and few of them are narrated underneath.

One Day Trainings

We conducted 3 "Leadership cum Friendship Camps" with children from 14 villages every Sunday during the summer. The idea to bring children together from distinct villages was to interact with the children of diverse villages so that they can understand each other and make friends which adds a lot of benefits to enhance the skills of children such as communication and expressing their opinions, teamwork, taking leadership, listening to others, and many more. This has also helped children to speak in front of a large audience which has a lot to do with public speaking and expressing their thoughts to people they don't know and have just met which builds strength in them to communicate and know themselves even better.

This camp was for children who are leaders of Bal Samiti because these are those children who will then get the exposure from camps and replicate that with children of their villages, enabling them to use skills such as communication, team work and taking leadership.

Leadership Camp

A three-day Leadership Camp from 4th May 2022 to 6th May 2022 was conducted for Bal Samiti Children of Bhavnagar and Dediapada at Pandit Sukhlalji Lok Vidyalay, Maidhar, a renowned ashram of Bhavnagar, Gujarat where children learnt about 'Child Right', 'Leader' and Leadership'.

Eight children (5 boys and 3 girls) from Dediapada went to the camp. It was the first time they were going to a different place without their parents but it didn't seem like they all were taking care of each other. The whole three days were so engaging and cheerful for them that they become so friendly with other children and that's the biggest achievement because they come from a culture where people don't say or talk more.

Children's learnings and experience

Children who went for the training become very enthusiastic as they met with other children. This has brought huge changes in them. After the training, children started to speak in front of large people, they took leadership and responsibility in every way possible. Confidence has overcome shyness in them and now they have become role personalities for other children who wish to get the qualities and training that which other 8 children had taken.

• Children learned to work in a group.
• Learn to get involved with other children.
• Children learn to take care of themselves
• They learn to speak in a large group
• Learn about 'Child Rights'
• Facilitators learned to manage children and their needs.

Aashramshalas:

After the summer vacation was over and as schools reopened, we have restarted our work in aashramshalas, this year we have expanded and are working in 9 Aashramshalas, 1 K.G.B.V. (Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya for girls who had dropped out of school or have not gone to school), and one government primary school. We are working with 748 boys and 807 girls in this program.

We have conducted Balmelas in all the aashramshalas with the theme of creativity thinking, critical thinking and cooperative games. 1555 children participated in these Balmelas.

Child Friendly Villages:

After the vacation, our work in child friendly village project has taken a new shape too. One of the challenge we were facing while working in these 14 villages was engaging with the older children in many villages. Out of these 14 villages on 13 have schools, and out of 13 only 3 villages have schools up to 8^thgrade, rest all the village have schools up to 5^thgrade only. The older children go out to study to other villages or to Dediapada even. Due to this, when we go for activities in the villages, they come late and were not able to participate fully. To encounter this challenge, we have started working in the schools once a week and do the activities with the younger children, and with the older children, our team goes to their villages on Saturday, and facilitates the activities with them. This has helped us in engaging more children and they are also welcoming this change.

Vanshala:

With the help of vacation, we were able to intensify our work in Vanshala, open learning space for children. During and after the vacation, we are doing more project based learning. They have been doing projects like learning and documenting the wild food available in their village, learning about and documenting herbs and traditional healing practices, learning traditional songs and dances, making a boat that can float out of natural things, etc. They participate in these activities with much enthusiasm and learn a lot, which they share with their peers and parents as well.

Aanganwadi:

Much work has been done on nutrition in Aanganwadis which is very essencial, however work on learning and pre-primary learning is still missing there. Seeing this gap, we have decided to work in aaganwadis as well on this aspect. We will be starting our work in 16 aanganwadis in these 14 villages from 1^stAugust. We will be working on children learning through games and activities, songs and stories and learning through their senses and keeping alive their curiosity.

Currently, we are training our team to work with 3-6 years old children, and meeting other stakeholders. We had a meeting with P. O. of ICDS, Narmada District. She was very enthusiastic about our idea, and have pledge support from her department. She has also request our team to help train the aanganwadi workers.