Janathepada-Toplepada Parents Meeting
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Team Suhrid had its first visit of Year 2015 on 17th Jan, 2015. We covered Janathepada and Toplepada. Incidentally, Janathepada was our first school which we included more than two years back, wherein Toplepada was the latest entrant.
Visit to Janathepada
This meeting was held in the morning session. There was an overwhelming response from the parents for this meet. Initially, Satish Fawade (school teacher) highlighted the contribution by Team Suhrid in last two years. Some of the encouraging facts in speech were:
- Almost 70 to 80% of the kids used to fall sick during each weather change, which has come down to 20% after the start of nutrition project and regular health checkup.
- Majority of the kids had skin related ailments periodically. However, once they were made to drink ample purified water, the skin related problems reduced drastically.
- Kids of even first standard have started learning simple English (Team Suhrid had conducted a session on Phonics for the teachers in April, 2014)
- Almost all the kids ensure very good hygiene (washing their hands, trimming the nails, wearing floaters etc)
Team Suhrid expressed their gratitude towards the teachers and the parents for supporting the initiative. Also, we spelled out our expectations from the parents, which included ensuring good hygiene at home, making kids drink more water and provide as much as nutritious food as possible, not ignoring some of the long-running health symptoms however small they may be.
We handed over a cheque to the teachers to kick off the water project at Janathepada. As of now, they have water supply from the well. However, they don’t have mechanism to store the same in the overhead tank and distribute. With this help, they would be able to supply water to kitchen, toilet and wash basins. Team Suhrid also donated an electrical water purifier for the school, which would be first in the entire region.
Local Sarpanch requested team Suhrid to pay a visit to Anganwadi and try to address certain issues, which we have accepted in our next visit. The response from the parents was extremely positive. One of the parents announced that he would take care of the entire plumbing for the water project, while rest of them committed support for physical labour.
Visit to Toplepada
Toplepada is situated at around 3.5 kms from Vikramgadh towards Jawahar. This school is very well supported by the local people. Though, they get the same aid from the government, the school premise is in better shape due to the support from the locals.
We were pleasantly surprised to see that the kids from 1st to 4th standard had set up an Anand Bazar. Those small kids played the role of vendors in the stall. They were selling fresh vegetables like Drumstick, broad beans, curry leaves, egg-plant at throw away price. These vegetables were locally grown. They also had lots of mouth-watering snacks items at the display. Most of the parents had good time enjoying the snacks and interacting with each other to start with. This helped well with ice-breaking between parents and Team Suhrid.
This was our first parents meet at Toplepada. However, the teachers had kept all of them abreast about our role in their growth. We distributed prizes to the talented kids. As a practice, we hand over the prizes to the winners in the presence of the parents, which make parents feel proud. The play area in the school gets completely unusable during the rains. Hence, we sanctioned financial support to them for laying the tiles, which can take care of cleanliness issues during rain. We also committed to give a water purifier for the school.
We met the Anganwadi in-charge, who takes care of 27 kids. The Anganwadi is very well maintained. The only challenge for them is the nutritious food. They expect us to help them with egg, jaggery and groundnut (High protein and mineral rich diet) so that they can improve upon the food intake for the kids. We would be reviewing the same soon along with doctor and dietitian.
