As you probably know, I came to Delhi one and a half month in advance in order to prepare the workshop. I would like to tell you few information about Project Why and share with you what has emerged from my preliminary researches, talks, occasions of reflection.

PW basically offers to children a tuition service, helping them with homework and teaching activities in the half of they day they don’t go to government school (morning for boys, afternoon for girls). The support it provides to them seems to very important because both because the quality of government school is very poor and because their parents are not able to give them any kind of guidance (lack of education, heavy workload, many children to look after etc.) PW benefits about 600 children, spread in 4 different localities: Govindpuri, Giri Nagar, Okhla, Khadar, all in the southern part of Delhi. There are few crèche sections, several primary sections, few secondary sections, a disabled section (about 20 disabled people of very different age, mainly with mental problems) a computer centre and a women’s centre: therefore the Project deals with children whose range age is from 2 to 15/16 and also with adult women. I’ve focused my attention on kids attending primary and secondary section (from 6 to 15).

In order to know them and their teachers I’ve worked for one months as a volunteer in two different centre: unfortunately some health problems didn’t let me go on with this activity but the time spent in the classes teaching English and Math was long enough to introduce me both to teachers and children and to get some impressions about the condition of education in India and hoe PW faces it. Considering the number of people (adults and kids) involved in PW it’s difficult to establish meaningful relationships with all of them but leaving in the foster care centre (together with four children and two disabled people), just in front of some classes and the main office of PW helped me to get to know more members of the staff and children. In order to understand better the dynamics and the way PW works it has also been very useful to talk with other volunteers who arrived here before me.

I carried out some specific activities to prepare the workshop. First of all it was necessary to explain roughly to PW management the Capability approach and how it can be used to explore the impact of the Project itself. Secondly I organized FGDs with teachers, parents and children in order to unfold the dimensions of well-being of children and relate each of them to aspects of their daily life. Information collected during these discussions has been transformed in drawed cards, which we will use for the card game. While It was very easy to talk with the children (above 11) who were very spontaneous in their answers and reflections, the interaction with the parents was quite difficult, both on a logistic and communicative point of view. Of course a major obstacle is represented by language: none of them speaks English and the intermediation of a translator presents many disadvantages. The FGD with the teachers, in spite of some language problems, was animate but very focused on education and parents inability to take care of their children. Here it’s a table summing up the main findings of the FGDs. Particular attention was paid to gender and disability dimensions.

Thirdly I’ve prepared a very simple info-sheet to map the children who will be involved in the activities, both participating to PW and belonging to the Control group. These latter live in slums located close to the Project, in areas where some people of the staff live. In some case I personally went to interview the children or their main caregiver (if they are below 12), in other cases I explained to the teachers how to do it.

I also visited a couple of time Praxis, an Indian organization focused on participatory methods. I was interested in discussing with them about the activities more suitable for young children and disabled people. One of the members has recently come to PW to interact with some children. Thanks to her reflections and suggestions I’m now thinking about an activity different from the drawing exercise (judged not very effective and appealing) for the children below 12 and some disabled people (i.e. block games). Any advice is welcomed. Finally, I’ve discussed with the three main members of the management about the questionnaire Mario Biggeri has prepared: we did some minor changes and, once translated in Hindi, we will test it on some children.

If you have any question or suggestion to give me about my job or the logistic you can write me and when you arrive in Delhi call me (9711057885).
I’m looking forward to meeting you
Sara Bonfanti

This blog idea is great!

Concerning a website for cheap hotels in India: I have not checked it out for India in detail yet, but I found the wiki-travel page (http://wikitravel.org/en/India#Sleep) for other countries pretty useful. It contains information on practical questions (`accommodation’, `getting around’ aso.), but also interesting background reads (ranging from `history’ over `non verbal communication’ to `etiquette’ and `literature’).

One question: I am now in my thesis endspurt and would love to do a `writting-retreat’ for a couple of weeks after the conference. Do you know any (not too busy) place that might be suited for this purpose?
Many thanks for all kind of hints, suggestions… whatever!

Have a good day!

Constanze