14 January 2007

 

Trip to: Hoogly (Jayrambati), Bankura (Narrah, Dhulai, Suklai), Medinipur

Purpose:           Annual tour to centers – assessment and planning

Visitors:            Prasad Sarkar, Subir Mitra, Sharmila Basu and Maya Sarkar

Trip-dates:        10, 11, 12 January 2007

 

Hoogly

 

Jayrambati was our first stop. We met the SMILE scholars at the hotel (Sarada Ashram). The students were Shampa Das, Mithu Das, Anindya Chatterjee, Narayan Das and Anup Das. All students reported that they got good marks in the class – some scoring very high in the Madhyamik tests. We reminded the students their academic responsibility as well as their obligation to Lily Foundation. We visited the house of Shampa Das and Mithu Das. It is a small cottage with one room-bed for the three brother and sisters. The father showed us another room that he started building recently. This is essentially a shack with ‘walls’ prepared by hanging torn gunny bags. The family has a small piece of land which brings some crops that provide food part of the year. The father supplies breads to the Ashram as a hawker.

 

Anindya Chatterjee has done very well in his test. He is determined to appear at the joint entrance exam for Medical as well as Engineering. We provided some prep books to him (these were given by Sarit’s family to us here).

 

Bankura

 

Our first stop was Narrah. Our coaching home Sanchari is located inside the High School building. We discussed with the organizer/teacher Rajesh Patra about the student progress and some future plans. We visited the class rooms and asked the students some questions in an informal manner. The 10th grade students are now busy preparing for the Madhyamik which is scheduled in about 5 weeks.

 

Then we visited Dhulai center. Prosenjit showed us the land where the Lily Education Center is to be built. We discussed the plan extensively with the builder about the layout, the access road, the water supply facility and probable construction time (our plan is to open the Center this May. The students of the Center will come from three high schools around. We could see two of them there, the other being a little far away. We met SMILE scholars in the area - Bijoya Mondal, Poly Bandyopadhyay, Tapasi Gorai, Tapas Baskey, Asmatara Khatun, Indadul Midya, Bamacharan Singh, Rahima Khatun and a few other prospective ones. We visited Tapasi’s house. This is not even a cottage, rather a shack with jute bags as walls (compared to the Das’ cottage in Jayrambati, it is a much worse living place). Tapasi studies there with hurricane light and is likely to get star marks in Madhyamik ( Thanks to Sponsor Aniruddha-Meenakshi who sent an extra thousand rupees to Tapasi through direct mail). Tapasi’s parents earning comes from boiling paddy, husking them at home and giving back the rice to the farmers. In this process, they get a small amount of rice from the farmers as payment for the job.

 

Then we visited the coaching home Dishari, which is held in a primary school. The students there are doing well in their studies as we have seen in the last Madhyamik results.

 

I personally checked the databases maintained for the Dishari book-bank. Currently this runs from Prosenjit’s house. The poor students borrow the books for a year from the bank. The students of Narrah also borrow books from here – Prosenjit personally carries them to that town at the start of the school-year. This book-bank will eventually operate from the Lily Education Center building in Dhulai.

 

We spent the night at Bishnupur. Next morning we went to Suklai, a village which is roughly an hour by car. This is the place we are going to open a primary coaching home at, next session. Alok Goswami will be the teacher there. He will operate at the small primary school building. The current Sarva-Sksha program for the village runs from here. We discussed the plan requirements there with Alok. Prosenjit will visit this facility time to time which will partially offset our burden of inspection at this remote place.

 

Medinipur

 

At Medinipur town, we are opening a High School coaching home from May. We met Dr. Satadal Paria and his family. Dr. Paria was a teacher before. He will teach  20 kids English and Math, assisted by his brother Dr. Prasun Paria and his wife. We went to the high school which will supply the students to our coaching home. The center will operate in the same school facility. Mr. Shibaji Sen, Headmaster, was extremely enthusiastic about our program, as he himself is trying hard to improve the school’s records in terms of number of students passing out every year. It is a point worth noting that this school primarily supports the SC/ST population around where the parents’ awareness is very low.

 

Overall, the trip was very successful. Prosenjit did the pre-coordination as well as the major escorting. In my opinion, Lily Foundation stands to achieve a lot from its current and planned operation from this Bankura-Hoogly-Medinipur belt.

 

prasad