Shawshank Redemption

This scene from Shawshank Redemption sums up what I imagine will happen when I start shifting through books for the library...

Projects and Programmes #2

Building Blocks is a small charity project, set up by a few individuals, who scour war-torn parts of Sri Lanka to find orphanages that need help. 

In the last two years, they've visited Trincomalee and Kilinocchi, in an effort to help the local orphanages.
They've built a kitchen for the Sivananda Thapovanam orphanage and have also planned to build a dormitory for an orphanage housing around 50 girls who all sleep, eat and study in the same building. Medical initiatives have also been set up: a hydration scheme where orphanages are provided with water bottles and informative posters as well as a nutritional supplement programme.   

After the success of their last fundraiser, Strike 2012, a football tournament that raised over £1000. They have arranged a sponsored bike challenge, the Big Bike Hike, around Croatia that is set to happen in May this year.

Visit the facebook page for more updates and details about their upcoming events.

Kakenya Ntaiya: A girl who demanded school

Kakenya Ntaiya made a deal with her father: She would undergo the traditional Maasai rite of passage of female circumcision if he would let her go to high school. Ntaiya tells the fearless story of continuing on to college, and of working with her village elders to build a school for girls in her community. It's the educational journey of one that altered the destiny of 125 young women. 

Caine's Arcade

Caine is a nine year old boy, who spent his summer building a cardboard arcade using the left overs from his father's auto parts store. This video received an amazing response all over the world and The Imagination Foundation was set up "to find, foster and fund creativity and entrepreneurship in kids".

Warning: This video will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

The Literacy Campaign

I found this, Classrooms around the World by Julian Germain on the Guardian website, a selection of photos that provide a fascinating insight into children, their classrooms and their education systems. Each photo has interesting commentary about the way it was shot, her thoughts on the children and the way they were or about the nature of their reality. I was particularly drawn to Cuba, a country home to Che, cigars and a youth literacy rate of 100%. I was intrigued to find out more.

The Cuban Literacy Campaign

not own image

1960, Castro vowed to eradicate illiteracy in just one year in post-revolution Cuba. He sent out posters, adverts, newspapers, anyone who could read and write was encouraged to become a literacy teacher or alfabetizador. 1961, more than 100,000 people volunteered - half of whom were women, they were enrolled on a rigorous two week training course where they learnt how to teach and how to withstand the harsh conditions of the villages. Literacy Brigades were then sent to the breadth and width of rural Cuba. Never before has a country mass mobilised unqualified teachers in such a way. People were engaged, excited to be a part of the social and political movement. The thirst for knowledge was ubiquitous, thousands of volunteers marched, carrying giant pencils, to the Plaza de la Revolucion on 22nd December 1961, all singing "Fidel, Fidel tell us what else we can do!" 

By 1962, the literacy rate was 98%. Classrooms were built, teacher training reformed, pre-school and primary education was available to all by 1970 (45 years ahead of the UN's 2015 deadline for its Millennium Development Goal). 

Maestra - a documentary by Catherine Murphy, exploring the Cuban Literacy Campaign through testimonies of young alfabetizadors. See the trailer below.

Now, education is free at all levels, irrespective of age, income, class. Mobile teachers are employed to teach children that can't attend school through either illness or disability. Cuba spends around 10% of their national central budget on education compared to UK's 4%. I remember reading that the Cuban government listed 20 books they believe every household should have. They are looking to give it out for free with their national newspapers. Despite a winning education system, there are concerns that Cuba doesn't prepare for life beyond the classroom, lack of opportunities coupled with poor wages has lead teachers to look for work with tourists. Cuba continues to change and update their education system, and what it achieved in 1961 was remarkable. Viva la Education. 

    

Entry #2

Sri Lanka 2010

I've visited Sri Lanka many times. Drove through many places, stopped for black tea at some and appams at others. The last time I was there was two years ago. Colombo was not exciting at all, it was stuck in the 90's and immersed in a dirty cloud of exhaust fumes.   

Tassles, our driver, listened to depressing music. He probably missed his wife. We were on our way to Nelliadi, from Colombo. We stopped at a house. A bearded man came to greet my dad. We were taken into a small, shabby room, double bed, dirty pillows and a desk. My dad told us that we were staying here for the night and that he was going to sleep at his friends, just down the road. He told me to ask the bearded man for anything I needed. 

Freya and I sat there. The bearded man knocked on our door, told us where the toilets were and left. The toilets are separate to the main house, usually tucked away in the garden. The garden was also home to a classroom. Blackboard, chalk and desks. I found this scribbled on one of the desks.

The bearded man turned out to be lovely. He had a wife and 2 children. We had spent the night in Vavuniya, my dad never explained why.

Entry #1

In preparation for the trip, I've decided to post ideas that I picked up from my travels, ideas I've had whilst brushing my teeth and just random tidbits I found through research. Some will be ambitious, some might not. It could be a total hoot or a complete fail. Most posts will probably be about none of the above, but I'm going to write it anyway. 

Travels 2011

Last year, I went to south-east Asia. I was one of those gap-yah types. I even bought myself a moleskin, the hall mark of a gap-yah ass. 

I taught English in Cambodia, tutored street kids in Nepal and jazzed up hospital wards in Vietnam. I thoroughly enjoyed my experiences in all those countries, exploring each vibrant culture through food, music, transport systems and night-life. Each country had its own flavour, manifested in several ways. Vietnam was perhaps the most peculiar.  It was a world where coffee beans were passed through the digestive system of a weasel. The people didn't seem to take to tourists very well, but that said, the volunteers we worked with were wonderful. The food was simple: each ingredient left to tell its own story. Noodle soups were my favourite. It always felt like the Vietnamese had no time to spare, the hustle and bustle of the streets of Hanoi started early in the morning and continued well into the night. The roads were filled with swarms of motorbikes with no regard for rules. Absolute refusal to stick to the appropriate driving decorum. Red lights didn't mean stop. Green didn't mean go. Waiting to cross the road would result in you waiting for hours. You had to just walk, make your way across the road, the motorbikes would work their way around you. I was always uncomfortable putting my life on the line like that. 

I volunteered with Haniah, a friend from school. It was our first night there, we met Anisa and Christian. Beth was arriving the next morning, so the rest of us went for dinner. It was posh. Dark wood tables. Stools. We were all discussing our travels: what we'd done, where we'd been, all the cool things we'd seen,  the foods we've tried, the mishaps, the number of flights we'd booked, infections we'd caught. It was Anisa's turn. She told us about Tenteleni. A project, based in South Africa, that she'd been to the summer before. She'd taught English at a local school alongside other activities including setting up a library. *lightbulb moment* I've always wanted to do something like that in Sri Lanka. When they were in South Africa, they sourced books from wherever they could. Put up posters and flyers around their resident town, it was a very successful book drive. They'd collected books, organised them, implemented a system and managed to form a library. That's what I want to do. A non-partisan project. The idea speaks for itself.

1000 books

1 Library 

1 Village

There was a Channel 4 advert for the National Year of Reading where celebrities read small extracts from different books and it was all edited so that they were finishing off each other's sentences, making sense and not making sense simultaneously. It was delightful! That's what I want to do for my promotional video. My dad is on site now so I'm going to get him to video a handful of children reading excerpts. Maybe get them to recite Bharathy, Avvaiyar or perhaps Thirruvalluvar. Make it look viral by getting him to tape it on his phone. I'll use my amateur editing skills to put  together something quite shabby but chic.