School Visit to Talyachapada and Kaspada
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We had our second visit of this academic year on 7th July 2018. As per the original plan, we were to go Nandelpada and Kaspdada. However, Nandelpada’s approach road becomes quite difficult during rainy season. Hence, we decided to postpone the same and replaced the same with Talyachapada visit.
Talyachapada and Kaspada are part of Wehelpada cluster. When we started off with these schools in 2013-14, Kaspada was considered as the most inferior school in terms of the infrastructure, cleanliness, general health and in general students’ behavior. Over a period of time, there is a complete transformation in the school. With the introduction of overhead tank for the water distribution, the cleanliness and hygiene factors improved. The teachers drove the ground leveling and compound related work, which gave a very good shape to the school building. Teachers followed the instructions related to enriched mid-day meals, making kids drink more water, maintain good habits viz trimming the nails, combing, oiling the hair, daily bath, washing hands, using dustbin effectively etc showed up in their overall personality and health. We could see substantial reduction in skin related ailments over a period of time. With the help of Suhrid foundation provided nutritious supplement and exceptional guidance from the teachers, the kids stood number 2 at the district level Kabaddi championship. Most of the kids are able to communicate well and are very good at speeches/singing and dance.
There was a time, when the kids did not have much to read except for the course book. We created a library wherein the kids were given 80 odd books (story, mythology, inspirational, travelogue etc) and charts. Additionally, the kids were provided lots of indoor games like chess, carom, Ludo, snake and ladder, Legos, Mechano apart from the routine outdoor sports material. The attendance started increasing rapidly. The student count went up from 55 to almost 90. Attendance was almost 100%. Very few kids were absent due to illness.
We did not stop our activities at the school level. We interacted with the villagers and created a check dam at Kas river. We got the guidance from experts from Dharampur. The approach helped us provide some temporary occupation for the villagers! This check dam helped in recharging of the major area around the dam.
This is for the first time, the student count touched three figure mark. We would be working on repair of the roof as one of the major project this time. Plantation within the school would be encouraged. Additionally, we would provide workbook to each student, which can make them self-sufficient in terms of their learning.
In the comparison of Kaspada, Talyachapada – despite of having better infrastructure to start with – could not keep pace. We would have to have special focus this time on this aspect.
Apart from meeting the teachers/students, distributing goodies and notebooks, we worked out the future plan with the teachers for the current academic year.
