Olcott Site Visit Report

Jan 2nd, 2016

Site Visit by Chidambaram Subbiah, Volunteer, Asha Saint Louis

I had met with the management of Olcott Memorial school a week back and we had setup the

site visit for the school. It was a Saturday but it was a working day for the school. The school is

located in the Besant Nagar area of Chennai and I was met at the gate by the security person at

the gate. I mentioned that I was there to meet Ms.Lalitha the principal of the school and was

directed the office at the school.

As I was walking to the office, I could see Children all over the campus sitting and studying

under trees. There were students who were practicing a dance routine in the elevated stage

area. I made my way to the office which is about 500 yards from the main gate. The office was

staffed by two people besides Ms.Lalitha. Ms.Lalitha, the principal then took me on a tour of

the school.

She mentioned this was the first day for middle school students and that the elementary school

was still closed as there was still some more work to complete to recover from the flood work.

The high school and middle school were functional. The tour started with a visit to the

kindergarden room and science lab. Both the rooms were badly affected by the floods.

All the items had been relocated in both rooms and these rooms will need to be repaired and

fixed for them to be fully functional.

The school caters to students from Kindergarden to class XII and they are now offering the

science stream as an option for high school students. We then walked by the lunch room where

the staff were preparing lunch. On talking with the lunch staff, I learnt that 471 students take

lunch at the school. The students are also offered Kanji in the morning for breakfast. The cost of

the kitchen is shared by Olcott management and the Government. There are 3-4 olcott

employees who support the two government employees in the running the kitchen. The kitchen

looked neat and the operation was done in hygenic conditions.

School uniforms and Notebooks for students are given by Olcott.

I then ran into the ninth standard students. There are 26 students in the class out of which 11

are girls and 15 are boys. The students mentioned they have one class teacher and they are

taught by five different teachers. What was obvious was the teachers wear multiple hats and

handle different responsibilities. The team work was obvious. I talked with six kids and the kids

were a little reluctant to talk to a stranger but they warmed up nicely. They were learning tamil

and all of them had ideas about the future. One of them wanted to be a doctor. Another kid

wanted to pursue science while another kid wanted to pursue accounting. One boy wanted to

be a police officer.

They have a total of 45 teachers in the school. An interesting fact was Ms.Lalitha, the current

principal is an Alumni of Olcott and she came back to teach at the school and has grown to be

the principal. We used to work with Ms.Lakshmi Suryanarayana. She is been battling cancer and

is now relocated outside Chennai. She stays in regular touch with Ms.Lalitha and Ms.Lakshmi

(English teacher at the school) and helps guide things at the school. Ms.Lakshmi, the English

teacher was not present today but I had the opportunity to meet and talk with her a week back.

She is a volunteer with a passion to help the kids at Olcott.

The school is been giving vocational training to a lot of kids in things like embroidery, Jewellery

making etc. I saw the kids on the way getting material ready to make ginger tea for the Annual

day function. It was nice to see the kids doing the work on their own with very little guidance on

site.

The school has a nice computer lab and had an opportunity to interact with the teacher in

charge of the Lab. She mentioned the kids really look forward to the computer lab time and

they make good use of the computer time. The lab was organized nicely with enough

computers for around 20 students. They have maintenance for the sytems from an outside

vendor who charges them nominally.

I then had a chance to interact with a bunch of students from class Xi. They were really bright

kids and these kids had a good clarity in what they wanted to do. There was one girl who

wanted to be computer engineer. Another kid wanted to be a teacher. I also ran into a few boys

on the way. A few of these boys worked in the morning delivering newspapers and then came

to school. I personally tried to encourage them to study hard and go on to become successful in

life. The boys promised to do that.

The flood damage was obvious and you could see water logging by the toilets. The school is

working on getting the water pumped out.

Finally had a chance to meet the class XII teachers and I could see the students studying under

the trees. They have 22 students in the history stream, 32 students in the commerce stream

and seven students in science.

It was a good visit and these are my high level observations. The school is catering to a

population that cannot afford to pay fees outside in a private school in this part of Chennai. It is

mainly catering to the poor and lower middle income families in the neighbourhood. It is a

boon for these students that they now have the opportunity to complete education upto class

XII in the same school. The students are going on to college and that is a great things. The

teachers are working in the spirit of volunteering as most of these teachers are paid far less

than what the market pays outside. The students look motivated and they seem to enjoy

school.

Please find attached the pictures taken all through the site visit.