Finance report for academic year 2015-2016

Below is the finance report for the year 2015 - 2016.

For academic year 2016 - 2017 we are continuing our initiatives on English teaching and education trip.

Along with regular classes, planning for special courses on personality and communication skill development for teachers and children.

Thanks for your continued support!

Updates: Exam time and 3rd anniversary

Focus for academic year 2015-16 is to improve English learning. For this we have created English course materials for students, sponsored additional teachers and CBH volunteers took regular classes. We see visible improvements in last couple of months, but this has to quantified. Hence we are conducting separate English tests for Class-3 to Class-7 in both schools we are attending. This will help us to know where we stand and plan for next academic year. This should also convey seriousness of our efforts to school staff, on whom we depend most. Tests are starting from next week.

Apart from this, we have completed 3 years of school activities last month. If we look back, we started with lot of enthusiasm and good will to do something for our neighborhood children. But when we came across ground realities of govt school operation and organizing ourselves to handle this... we had become clueless and confused. Thanks to brainstorming session we had before forming the trust and key inputs from experts. Now we have organized our activities and setup specific goals. Its a fulfilling experience for all residents involved. Thanks to all for your support.

Mysore Trip

One of the main objective of Chilume is to facilitate school trip to explore the world around us, it should be both fun and learning experience for students. Our school (Yadalam and Turahalli school) children hardly go for trips, when we went to Vishweshwariah Museum last year, it was first school trip for most of kids. We had few options of taking them to airport, metro ride, Mysore and Agastya Campus. Since they hardly go out of Bangalore, 2-day trip to Agastya campus looked ideal, but it didn't materialize. Hence we planned trip to Mysore covering interesting places for kids, like Zoo, palace and Raganathittu bird sanctuary.

Kids were super excited to see different variety of birds, snakes, crocodiles and not to mention other wild animals. Evening serene boat ride in Ranganathittu will remain in our memory forever. Though they danced all the way to Bangalore while returning, it was easy to handle them in Zoo or Palace due to their lane discipline. Definitely Chilume will be planning many more trips like this in coming years.

Few snaps of trip below:

Participation in Chiguru event

Youth for Seva (YFS) has conducted event for government school children on 6th Dec 2015 in Delhi Public School, Kanakapura road. Events include: Clay modelling, memory test, Creative writing, Origami, Story telling, Yoga, Group dance/song, etc.

Thanks to the effort of teachers, children and volunteers, both Yadalam and Turahalli government schools have won 3 prizes each.

Yadalam School received prizes in group Dance, mad ads and pick & speak. Mad ads is scripted by youngest CBH volunteer Nandana. Ad is "MomPlan  - Secret of my Buddhi" [Complan: Secret of my energy].
Turahalli school received prizes in street play, dumb charades and mad ads.

Thanks to CBH volunteers helping schools to prepare for this event. Volunteers are Vasantha, Sushila, Lakshmipriya and Nandana.

Monthly update: October-2015

English course: Good progress is made in both schools
After teaching basics (mainly phonics in Level-1), we have moved to Level-2 teaching. This progress is no surprise for Turahalli School which is having dedicated and highly enthusiastic teachers. This school is mentored by our volunteer Ms Revathi.

Good news is, Yadalam School has also picked up very well with Level-1 teaching. Recently a test was conducted to evaluate learning. Out of 26 students, 25 students scored more than 50% and 15 students scored more than 90%. This is very satisfactory for us as this is not by heart method. Kudos to Ms. Vasantha for making this happen. She has used different techniques, gave assistance to teachers and paid special attention to some students.

Work of Ms Vasantha and Ms Revathi is always inspirational and backbone of Chilume activities.

Healthy diet session:
This month we had conducted a healthy diet session in Turahalli School. We had invited a specialist from Fortis Hospital to create awareness on food habits in kids. Session was lively and interactive. Kids also got gifts for listening attentively and answering the questions in end :)

Notebook Donation:
Notebook distribution used to happen every year through NGO and few donors. But this year due to some reason, schools didn't get notebooks. Based on Head mistress’s request, we arranged 350 notebooks to Turahalli School. Thanks to Ajit Gopalakrishnan for sponsorship.

Update on English teaching

We have prepared course-I material with the main focus on Phonics. This has been ruled out in 3rd to 7th standard in Turahalli school and 3rd to 5th standard in Yadalam school. This special coaching class runs everyday for all the above mentioned classes from 2.30PM to 3.30PM. These classes taken by teachers of respective school and overseen by Ms. Vasantha and Ms. Revathi from CBH. Also they pick students who needs more attention and train them.

We have mixed results after three months of teaching. We see good results in Turahalli school where kids are able to identify English letters and form word. Though small, it's good beginning and children are getting comfortable with English. But in Yadalam school, we see improvements are not satisfactory. We have analysed reasons for this failure and putting corrective action in place.

Meantime, we have received booklets for Course-II, which will have advanced phonics covering words, silent letters and basic phonic rules.

Guru Sakshat Parabrahma

ಕರ್ನಾಟಕದ ಕಾವೇರಿ ನೀರು, ಕೊಡಗಿನ ಕಾಫಿ ಬೀಜ,
ಮಂಡ್ಯದ ಸವಿ ಸಕ್ಕರೆ, ಬೆಂಗಳೂರಿನ ಹಾಲು,
ಇವೇಲ್ಲವು ಸೇರಿ ಕಾಫಿಯಾಗಿ ನಮಗೆ ಬರುವ
ತಲೆ ನೋವು ಹೇಗೆ ಹೋಗಲಾಡಿಸುತ್ತದಯೋ...
ಅದೇ ರೀತಿ ನಮ್ಮ ಪ್ರೀತಿಯ ಶಿಕ್ಷಕರಾದ ನೀವೆಲ್ಲರೂ
ನಮ್ಮಲಿರುವ ಅಜ್ಞಾನವನ್ನು ಹೋಗಲಾಡಿಸಿ
ಜ್ಞಾನವನ್ನುತುಂಬಿ ನಮ್ಮನ್ನು ಈ ದೇಶದ ಒಳ್ಳೆಯ
ಪ್ರಜೆಗಳನ್ನಾಗಿ ಮಾಡುತ್ತಿರಿ.

ತಮಗೆಲ್ಲರಿಗೂ ಶಿಕ್ಷಕರ ದಿನದ ಶುಭಾಶಯಗಳು!

Above, independence day speech from one of the student in Turahalli school :) Unlike private schools where alert parents track, guide and decide future of their kids, in these government schools future of kids solely depends on dedication of teachers. Fortunately we still have and continue to have genuine teachers working for government schools trying to build future of kids. We see god in them!

Guru brahma, guru vishnu,
Guru devo maheshwara
Guru sakshat parabrahma
Tasmai shri guruve namah!

No wonder kids were so restless till they got cake for their beloved teacher.