PROJECT ANANYA: Date: Monday, June 2, 2003. Site Visit Report. Madhav Ranganathan, Asha Stanford Getting there: 8:30 am Bus 215 from Kalasipalyam to Anjanapura. Dr. Shashi Rao also took the same bus from Deepak Nursing home. We reached Ananya school around 9:30 am. Ananya: Since I had done a site visit report about a year ago, the place had not changed much since then. This report is a follow-up report so it will skip the details given in the previous report like the details of the place and the people there. Shashi mentioned that the place had really suffered because of the lack of rains. South India was really suffering from lack of rains at that time. There were a few showers the previous evening and that had made the place a little cooler. Sarah is a new staff at Ananya. She was in Mumbai before that. She is very young and enthusiastic, and though she cannot speak in Kannada, she is a favourite with the kids. Last year, they had a Japanese intern (name ?), who worked with Ananya through AISEC. AISEC organizes volunteers and internships for students. She was at Ananya for a few months. The Visit: When I got there the kids had not yet arrived for their opening day of school. Shashi and I sat in the office and talked about the school in general. Shashi said that over the past year, she became pretty confident about the running of the school and things were in place with that. For the following year, she wanted to focus on the teacher training program that she was conducting for teachers of other schools. So far she was doing it whenever she had the time, but the following year, she wanted to start doing it more regularly. She wanted to do teacher training at two levels: 1. Fresh approaches to teaching sociology, psychology along with some ideas for curriculum development. 2. Training school managers, senior trachers etc. This training will focus on designing teaching aids, mainly for underprivileged kids, and how to have an adaptable curriculum. For the school, she wanted to make land the theme for the year. The students would be divided into 5 groups based on ability and these groups would be named after a word associated with land. During the course of the year, the students would try to carry out some organic vegetable growing in the Ananya land and in their way they would learn more about land and its uses. The other thing that happened during the past year was the land sale that did not happen. The land that Ananya is on belongs to a person who is in tune with the Ananya philosophy about the land use. But the agreement that Ananya had with them was that anytime they would find a person who would purchase the land for a suitable amount, then the land would be sold to them. During the past year, some pretty large builders showed interest in purchasing the land for 30 lakhs, and after a lot of negotiations, Shashi Rao decided not to sell the land to them. The area is designated by the government as a greenbelt so there are regulations about the kind of organization that can exist on the land. Anyways, to make a long story short, Ananya is ideally looking to purchase the land from the owner. Also, Mr. Menon (Hari's dad) donated his old jeep to the staff of Ananya so that they would have a vehicle at the school and also so that they could save time travelling to the school. The people at Ananya were really excited about the vehicle and took photos by the vehicle when it arrived and the key was handed over. George, one of the staff, who stays in the school with his wife, had a son a year ago. Nitin is staying in the school and gets a VIP treatment from all at Ananya. Since it was the first day, there were no regular classes. There were a number of parents who came and asked Ananya to take their children into the school. Ananya does not take children below the age of 6 or those that drop out of school for lack of funds. I got to see some a family of 3 children who wanted to enter the school. The oldest was going to 10th standard and he was ranked 3rd in class, but did not have the Rs.1000 for the annual fees. Ananya decided to give him the money and allow him to continue in regular school. The middle kid was in 4th standard and had failed and Ananya decided to accept him. The family was convincing Ananya that the third child was 7 years old, but since he looked a lot younger Ananya decided not to accept him. It seemed clear that there was a great demand for people to join Ananya school. The kids at Ananya cannot get enough of it. Though the year got over at the end of March, many kids stayed back for Art workshops during the summer them would go home for as little as 2 weeks. Some of them would come to school before the first day. Clearly, all of them really liked being in the school. The older kids at Ananya were undergoing some sort of vocational training at other organizations like Maya. Maya provides a stipend of Rs.600 p.m. to the kids along with the vocational training. Nissar was taking screen printing classes and he got pretty good at it. He designed the envelope and the letterheard for Ananya. I saw the preliminary design of the Ananya annual report for 2002-3. This year they want to make a coloured brochure (cost Rs.28000). Over the last year, they designed cards from children's paintings. They spent about 22000 and raised about 46000. Since it was the first day of class, there were a lot of new admissions that the people had to take care of. They were busy noting the details of the new students and thinking about the groups to put them in. However, Shashi conducted a story class in which she read a story (Aladdin and the magic lamp) in English. The kids were enthralled by here expressive reading. At the end of the story, they were asked to draw anything related to the story. Children drew the magician, the genie, the princess, the lamp, etc. Some group wanted to arrange a visit to a science museum with an astronomy show in Kannada and English for the kids that weekend. The students were split into those who wanted to watch the program in English and those who wanted to watch it in Kannada. Dell had done a community day of the company at Ananya. They called up Ananya to get a feedback about their program. Shashi told them honestly about the problems with the program and what she would like to see happen the next time. In particular she was very severe about the fact that at the corporate snacks, there was a large amount of wastage of food, which is thoroughly discouraged at Ananya. Some of the Ananya staff attended the "Alternatives in Education Conference" organized by Jayashree and Anita from Asha Seattle. They both said that it was really useful to them. They also attended the workshop on crafts conducted by Timbaktu Collective as part of the "Learning Network" initiated by Anita. On the wall of Ananya, I saw the Asha calender. Shashi said that they are extremely familiar with Tulika publishers and have all their material. Shashi's daughter worked with Tulika for 3 years. Ananya has an understanding with Dream a Dream for 3 years and they organize field trips for the kids of Ananya. Except for the Kerala trip, for which Ananya raised the funds, they are in charge of all Ananya's field trips. Shashi mentioned that companies in India are now having a little more social focus. Convergys systems started a call center in Bangalore and at the launch of the call center, they announced a $5000 donation to Ananya. I'm not sure whether the money has reached Ananya yet. GE Elfun managed distribution of 2500 books donated from a Wisconsin public library and Ananya received some of the books. Ravi Kallayil, former Bay Area resident, who introduced Ananya to Asha Stanford and is currently in Philadelphia, designed the web-page for Ananya. We had lunch prepared by Shivamma, the cook at Ananya. The food was simple and nourishing. I left Ananya around 4 pm taking the bus back into Bangalore. Closing thoughts: Ananya is a school that is doing very well, is fairly stable financially, but they need to solve the land problem. I don't think it is an option for Asha to pay the 30 lakhs or so for the land though that will probably make them happy. Ananya is fairly well connected in the social sector and the hope is that they should be able to work this out. Shashi is focussing on the teacher training aspect. It is clear that Ananya wants to share their experience and expertise with others. I recommend that Asha Stanford should fund Ananya for another year and in the time explore other avenues of funding.