Asha Mar 2011 Draft #3 · Brindavan Layout, Kadugodi Bangalore 560 067 THE CHILDREN’S PROJECT...

HOME AND SCHOOL

PERMANENT ADDRESS, INDIA

The Children’s Project Trust Home And School

House #122, Kathelekad Village Maragodu Post, Madikeri Kodagu District 571 252 Registered Charitable:

AAATC3798B

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE, INDIA

The Children’s Project #225 Sudas Apartments

Brindavan Layout, Kadugodi Bangalore 560 067

THE CHILDREN’S PROJECT

EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION, USA 5954 California Street

San Francisco, CA 94121 501 (c)(3) Federal Tax ID:

27-0775488

PROJECT UPDATE

Prepared for:

ASHA For Education

March 2011

ASHA REPORT 21 March 2011 of 9

OVERVIEW As 2010 came to close we found ourselves still in Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh. And, although we all look forward to the time when we can return to Coorg, there has been positive forward motion and expansion in all our activities. Construction continues in Coorg and the roof will soon go on our

building. There has been more cultivation on our land as well. The children are growing in knowledge, life experience and sociability. We have seen a maturing in the older girls, many of who now take more responsibility around the home and show a deeper interest and accountability in

their studies.

The time of our return to Coorg is growing nearer, but we appreciate all the growth opportunities we have had while in Andhra. Here are a few bonuses:

• The children are becoming more strongly knit as a family unit. Living in close quarters has

enhanced their social skills and deepened their inner life. We all have to learn teamwork and ways to mediate any differences in opinion. This is important since our present children will be peer counselors for the new ones we will take on in Coorg.

• We are expanding our infrastructure in Coorg in terms of agriculture and use of natural resources. We will move back into an ideal situation where we will already be growing our

own organic vegetables, fruits and rice. The cows will be giving milk and eating grass grown by us and the bore wells will be pumping out plenty of water.

• Puttaparthi is an international pilgrimage center and so we have met new friends who are interested in volunteering when we return to Coorg.

• We have had a wealth of highly qualified guest teachers. A number of them have made a commitment to come and stay with us in Coorg for varying lengths of time.

• These new faces have broadened our base of grass roots support. Many visitors leave with a

commitment to give whatever they can to grow the project. While this has brought more smaller donations through our website, the love and good wishes people flow to us help as much as their pennies and rupees.

We move forward as quickly as resources will allow, and always seem to have enough for the next

step. Even if it is not at the brisk pace we might envision, we are thriving and expanding, learning and loving. Below are more detailed updates on our activities.

THE SCHOOL Learning

We are an English Medium school and our children continue to take all the traditional classes such as social

studies, general knowledge, history, maths, sciences, writing and English as well as computer science, film studies and creative writing. Currently these are all

being taught either by our permanent volunteer staff teachers or other volunteers.

A geography class with our permanent staff teacher, Laurie Perry.


Below are some items of note:

• EXAMS: Seven 12th Standard girls are now preparing for the final Senior Secondary Exams in April and May. Two

more will take the secondary exams. Courses of study include Accountancy, Business Studies, Biology, English, Sociology, Home Science, Psychology, Word Processing,

Painting and Mass Communications.

• GUEST TEACHERS: We have had a so many excellent guest teachers since our last report that we have not

needed to hire fulltime staff teachers. We have a permanent volunteer teacher for our Junior Kindergarten now, who has been assisted in the last

several months by a Montessori teacher from United Kingdom. A writer has been teaching creative writing and two former college professors have been covering

social sciences. Several volunteer teachers have made significant contributions to the education of our older girls in accounting and business.

• PAID TEACHERS: We are reaching a time of the year when many overseas visitors leave Puttaparthi, so we are beginning to look for paid teacher to provide continuity to the children. We are allocating for three in our budget.

• MATHS AND ACCOUNTING: Our wonderful guest teacher, Christy Wang, from USA, a former CPA with Viacom/MTV Networks, visited us again. Christy lives on premises when she comes

and has become a member of the family. For 4 months she honed the math skills of all our children and took the middle children into Algebra and Geometry – a great boon. Six of our older girls received daily classes in accounting. The training covered class material for their

senior secondary exam in Accountancy this April, and something more – QuickBooks accounting software. Last year we began inputting the records of our expenses in Coorg. Several of the older girls will now begin to input our daily living expenses.

• “BUSINESS DAY”: For six weeks in late 2010 and early 2011 our senior students were treated to a business and marketing intensive by a business school graduate and former employee trainer for a large Canadian bank, Kiran Mahatani. The girls learned how to develop a full

business plan for a mock café business, which could actually be submitted to a bank for financing. The class was divided in to two teams – “Michelangelo’s Bakery” and “Sunshine Café”. On January 15th the two cafés were opened here for a day of business, cooking and

dining. Areas of study in the course included . . .

o Market research (where they interviewed the rest of the students in the school as potential customers)

o Product design and packaging (based on customer preferences) o Branding (including logo design) o Budgeting (including sourcing of low-‐cost resources) o Product pricing and profit-‐making

Aliveli, 12th Standard, studies for exams.


o Advertising o Daily business operations

The rest of the school all actively participated,

from beginning to end, by filling out the market research surveys on the various aspects of a café: food style, atmosphere, locations, etc.

They also acted as “customers” for the day. Monopoly money was provided to groups of 3 or 4 children who were explained the concept of

the business day and got a sense of what traditional retailing was like. Both the members of the class and rest of the school recognised

how much hard work was needed to run a simple business for even a few hours.

• HINDI CLASSES: We now have a regular teacher of Hindi, a former college professor, who

gives two classes daily. Her lesson plans include learning the Hindi alphabet through devotional compositions and songs. Since the script for Hindi and Sanskrit are the same, the

students are learning to read a few simple, popular Sanskirt prayers as well. This is a nice accompaniment to our daily classes in Vedas, the ancient spiritual texts of India.

Creativity

• STUDENT FILM: We now have three girls who are actively working on a longer film on their

roots in the tent villages and the lives of their relations who still live there. Ganga, Aliveli, Maheswari all came from those challenging situations, however they are able to deal with this material objectively. This is an empowering project for them for many reasons. On the

most basic level, the girls deepen their knowledge of computer and video technology and thereby increase their capacity to make a good living in this information hungry world. More heartening is that their ability to deal with this subject material objectively has shown us just

how much they have transcended the difficult circumstances of their birth, and grown in the kind of love and compassion that will help them to create fulfilling and happy lives.

• FILM STUDIES: Our film program continues with children from the 7th standard up and it has

become an excellent tool to teach the children a variety of skills: organization, storytelling, writing, interviewing and role playing as well as technology. The 7th standard girls are

currently working on short reports of activities around the school. These are simple stories of daily life, like “Ballroom Dance Class”, “Mindful Eating”, “A Weekend Outing”, and “Veda Chanting”. Each film includes interviews, voiceover narration and images. It’s a wonderful

creative tool that is really building communication skills. Nilima Abrams, former Asha steward was here for 6 weeks over Christmas holidays and also brought her expertise to the program. She was impressed with how much the children have evolved since her previous

visit – not just in communication skills, but as human beings.

• COMPUTER SCIENCE: We have recently introduced basic computer keyboarding to two of our second standard girls with reading disabilities. We find it is giving them a chance to

explore the spatial relationship of shapes and letters in a different way. It is too early to tell how much they will improve, but we are very grateful to have these resources for them.

“Business Day” at our cafés.


• CHRISTMAS PLAY: This year for the first time we presented a play that included all the children in the school. It was created in their classes over the month of December and many

of original ideas came from the children as well as much of the dialogue. They painted a fantastic backdrop for this as well. The play was called “THE ONE LIGHT”, referring to the light of love and awareness that lives in every being. The play was so well received by our

friends and guests that we performed it many times. Special performances were requested, included one held in the village for local children. The photo below shows another performance that was held in Sathya Sai Baba’s Ashram on December 31st. This has been

uploaded on the internet and is available for streaming. If you wish to view it, please go to http://vimeo.com/18872796. Password: light.

Daily Life

• PETS: We have added several pets to our family, which has helped the children in many ways. Shambhavi is a beautiful purebred Rottweiler from Germany. Highly socialized, gentle

and intelligent, she gives the children a real sense of security and is a fun and always willing playmate. Several children have primary responsibility for her care. They take their tasks seriously and the work lifts them up in a variety of ways. Sylvio and Venus are two

flowerhorn fish, a male and a female. “Uncle” selected this species because of their interactivity. They grow quite large and will happily follow a finger or a face that is moved

back and forth on the outside of their tank. The children enjoy them and take responsibility for their care.

• KITCHEN: We keep a regular staff of kitchen ladies, who also help with the heavy cleaning.

An Indian volunteer visited us recently to help revamp our kitchen and begin teaching the older children about local foods and produce. The kitchen can be said to be the heart of every home and this volunteer not only left us with new cookware and spices, but began the

process of integrating our older children into meal management on a deeper level and different teams now supervise the meal prep on various days of the week. We are developing a class for this which will give the children a chance to learn hands on kitchen

management including food procurement, preparation and presentation to a large group.

“THE ONE LIGHT” - Final song, performed in Prasanthi Niliyam on December 31, 2010.


THE LAND • PLANNING: There has been a lot of activity on our plantation as well. Michael, the father of

our project, makes frequent visits to the land to check up on activities. In November, his wife, Aleli, our mother, accompanied him. This helped them refine the interior design and

make critical decisions about plumbing, electricity and water. They are also working with architects from Australia who have come forward to help us complete the designs for the interior masonry according the principles of Vastu and Feng Shui.

• CONSTRUCTION UPDATE: Preparation for laying the roof slab is almost done and we hope to have

the crew in to complete this by the end of March. After that – the walls! Our work flow is dependent on the

resources we have available. However, even in between large tasks, work continues non-‐stop and

we have a small fulltime crew who daily move forward on various tasks like rebar bending, smaller cement

work jobs, etc.

• ORGANIC GARDENS: An organic farmer from USA spent a month on the land in January working with our on-‐site manager, Rajesh, and two of our older girls to refine our kitchen

gardens. A mini tiller was purchased for us and, after preparing a large garden bed,

spinach, carrots, potatoes, beetroots, lettuce, beans and a variety of herbs were

planted. She also worked with our plantation manager to help him root 2000 coffee

seedlings for sale to a neighboring farm.

• IRRIGATION SYSTEM: This kind

volunteer also supervised the installation of a new irrigation system which will make it easier for us to manage the growth of our cardamom and vanilla

crops. This includes a hose system for transporting a liquid mixture called “compost tea” to the plants – malodorous to us, but the plants thrive on it.

• FRUIT TREES: We are continuing to plant more fruit trees including mangos, bananas and papayas. A happy accident has given us many passion fruit seedlings which are growing strong.

Volunteer (right with mini tiller); Anji, 12th Std. bringing us refreshment.

Early February 2011. Roof projected to go on by the end of March.


• DAIRY: Our HF cow, Ganga, just gave birth to a healthy boy in late February who we’ll call “Balram”. We now have 8 cows in our herd and get more enough milk to supply the needs of

our workers and visitors. Three of the other females are also pregnant.

• COFFEE: It is once again picking time and we are set to have a crew of 20 this second week of March. It looks like we will have a good crop this year.

Everything on our plantation is geared towards creating an environment which will eventually be self-‐sustaining. We cannot say how long this will take, only that we hold on to this vision and go forward step by step.

ADMINISTRATION • WEBSITE: The website, as you will have seen, has actually been launched. This has brought

some new influences and many people have expressed interest in volunteering when we return to Coorg. Some are even interested in finding more information to develop similar types of projects in their home areas.

• DONATIONS: We do regularly receive donations through the website and we are grateful for every penny. It helps us with daily expenses, but it is not yet substantial enough for complete our major capital improvements, such as the building. However, we do not let that

stop us!

• REVISED ACCOUNTING SYSTEM: We are revising our account systems slowly, to see that everything, school operating expenses, capital improvements and construction costs and

donations are input into QuickBooks. Several of our older girls have been working with “Aunty” to keep the ledger of expenses for the last few years. This year four of our best accounting students have been taught QuickBooks and have just begun to input this past

year’s school expenses. We are grateful for their support and they are pleased to learn and be helpful to the process. Soon we should they will be training to input plantation expenses as well.

Some of our children and teachers in Puttaparthi – February 2011. Playful shot taken by a visiting art teacher. Each child and teacher contributed one stroke of the brush to the piece above.


PER ANNUM OPERATING EXPENDITURES (INDIA) Home & School Based on figures from 2010 and projections for 2011; calculated as of March 21, 2011 at the exchange rate of USD $ 1 = Rs. 45.01.

COST (per annum) CATEGORY OF EXPENDITURE

FUNDING

SOURCE Rupees Dollars

1 Home: Daily Operations

Food 4,32,000

Clothing 30,000

Housewares, toiletries 60,000

Utilities, Kitchen Gas 43,200

(3) Kitchen Staff @2,600/per

Asha Trustees

Private Donors Staff

93,600

TOTAL HOME Rs. 6,58,800 $ 14,636.60

2 School: Daily Operations

Textbooks, School supplies (paper,

pencils, etc., ) 1,20,000

Salaries (3 @ @ Rs. 5000/month) 1,80,000

Rent (2 add’l flats) 87,000

Transportation 48,000

Telephone bill, internet, electric bill

Asha Trustees

Private Donors Staff

36,000

TOTAL SCHOOL Rs. 4,71,000 $ 10,464.23

3 Special Needs

General medical care for the children (Ayurveda, over the counter, vitamins)

Surgeries: children and parents 70,000

Child Sponsorship (children in other schools)

Asha Trustees

Private Donors Staff 54,000

Outreach (goods to poor communities,

housing, food, clothing, etc.) Trustees, Staff Private Donors

18,000

TOTAL SPECIAL NEEDS Rs. 1,42,000 $3,154.82

5 Administration

Office supplies, copies 12,000

Accountant Trustees

10,000

TOTAL ADMINISTRATION Rs. 22,000 $ 488.77


6 Human Resources (Fulltime Staff)

President & Project Administrator

School Principal and Residential Coordinator

Residential Coordinator/Teacher

Communications Director/Teacher

Assistant On-‐Site Administrator

Self Volunteer

On-‐Site Administrator – Coorg Trustees Rs. 1,80,000

TOTAL HR Rs. 1,80,000 $ 3,999.07

TOTAL EXPENDITURES PER ANNUM 2011 Rs. 14,51,800 $32,254.73

Asha Mar 2011 Draft #3 · Brindavan Layout, Kadugodi Bangalore 560 067 THE CHILDREN’S PROJECT...

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