Social Involvement Program (SIP) Report

Name: Siddharth Anantharam Class: TYBA - Economics Roll No: 133

In my three years as a student of Economics in St. Xaviers College and as a member of the SIP Programme, I have worked in 2 different organizations apart from taking an active part in various social projects and events. The organizations in chronological order of my volunteer activities are as follows: 1) YMCA (Andheri) Boys Home Organization Profile The Young Mens Christian Association (YMCA) is one of the oldest and largest non-profit community service organizations in India. A community based organization, that work collaboratively with government and non government organizations, and partners to provide a range of programs and services to build strong people, strong families and strong communities. YMCA is a worldwide voluntary movement for women and men with special emphasis on youth. It seeks to build a community of justice with love, peace and reconciliation. It adopts a holistic approach of developing young minds, body and spirit, looking beyond the isolated symptoms, such as unemployment and homelessness. Founded in 1844, it works through 14,000 local associations and 40 million members in 127 countries. The YMCA seeks to help young people to develop their wholesome personality - the mind, body and spirit - on sound principles. Its range of activities include providing accommodation & hospitality, meeting & conference facilities, outdoor games, indoor games, art & cultural activities, educational institutes & vocational training Centres, intellectual pursuits, social services, camping services, etc. My Role as a Volunteer I was primarily a volunteer at the Andheri Boys Home Branch of the YMCA. Sixty five underprivileged orphans and single parent boys are cared for during their formative years at the Boys Home. As a volunteer, my primary aim was to tutor these boys and keep them updated as well as on track with the lessons they were taught in class everyday. I taught 3 sets of boys from Standards 4th, 5th and 6th thrice a week primarily in the evenings after they returned from the Municipal Schools that they attended through the day. The subjects taught by me were as follows: y y y Science Geography Mathematics

Since I was solely responsible for teaching 3 batches of students (3 children each) from 3 different standards, I had to be extremely careful to ensure that all the three batches were getting my equal attention and guidance. I initially started off teaching all three batches in a span of 2 hours every evening, but I realized that I wasnt doing complete justice to any of the batches by doing this. Hence I immediately changed my methodology and ensured I taught the students of 4th and 5th once a week for 22.5 hours while I spent the other 2 days with the students from the 6th standard. Some of my key observations in the above role were:  The Children purely adopted a Rote method of learning irrespective of what subject they were learning. Using such a method often made them sit for hours at an end memorizing something (especially in Science) without understanding the practical significance of the same.  The Municipal School teachers seemed to be indifferent to the progress of the children in their own classes. They often gave homework to the children, without bothering to ensure that it was completed the next day and most importantly completed correctly! Even tests that were taken in class were often not corrected in the right manner leading to the children learning the wrong spellings, concepts and answers to various questions.  The children loved to display their knowledge if they were confident about something.  The questions that followed once the chapter was taught and thoroughly understood were indeed extremely fascinating and challenging at the same time since I had to give a thought to a few of them myself before giving them a convincing reply. My key attempts to positively help the children involved:  Teaching subjects like Science through interactive and real life explanations as well as illustrative diagrams. I often carried along books from home that would help the children understand a particular topic better. I even carried a globe that I had with me to make them understand the concept of the Earth, rotation, different countries,etc  I ensure each and every H.W was completed on a day to day basis and personally checked it to ensure the children were not learning something wrong. Even tests that were corrected by their teachers were re corrected by me to ensure there were no errors.  I tried my best to answer all question that my boys had both within the scope of their studies and outside them. I remember having an extended discussion with the boys one day who had numerous questions about how my mobile phone worked. They wanted me to teach them to store their own name and number on my phone and message/call them to double check. The expression on their faces after having successfully entered their names on my phone and pretending to call themselves was hilarious!

Reflection and Analysis about the NGOs intervention I believe the Andheri YMCA Boys Home is one of the best centers for overall development of under privileged children. It not only focuses on ensuring every child is guaranteed admission to the nearby Barfiwala Municipality School but also keeps a track of the progress of every child with the help of its residential caretakers and external tutors as well as volunteers. The most important aspect of the whole process is it helps every child grow in the area of their interest. Interested children are given vocational training courses in areas like carpentry, painting, sculpting, pottery, etc. The other unique thing about the YMCA is the emphasis that it lays on Sports to all the children of the Boys Home. Each student is trained in games like basketball, badminton, skating and tennis within the premises of the Andheri YMCA which keeps them physically fit and mentally fresh. Most importantly, the obedience and discipline displayed by the boys is something that even put me to shame. All in all I believe that the Andheri YMCA is a brilliant centre for the overall development of children who do not possess the same opportunities that many of us do.

Reflection and Analysis about my role as volunteer The nature of my role was mostly that of a teacher but I ensured that I did not portray myself as one in order to build a strong connect with the children. One thing that really helped me bridge the gap between me and them were the numerous games of basketball we played after each tutorial class. This really helped me understand them better and also ensured the fear element was lost in their minds. The highlights of my role as volunteer were: y When one my children Ajit rushed up to me directly after school one evening and showed me the full marks he had obtained in the science test that he had given that morning and for which we had studied in the previous class. The look of happiness and gratitude on his face was something that kept me actively involved in the teaching process. I was invited to the Andheri YMCA Annual Cultural Day by my children. They had specifically asked me to be there since they were performing a dance to the song bum bum bole and were extremely kicked about it. This was the Malhar season and I was hoping that I would not have to stay back till late that evening so that I could be a part of their celebrations. Unfortunately it turned out to be a late evening. I rushed to the YMCA directly from college and entered right in time to see their performance. Not having seen me at the start of the event they had assumed that I had decided to skip the event. But the moment they saw me enter their dance steps and cheers grew louder than ever. This was the moment I realized how much I meant to them and made up my mind to continue my association with the organization for a long time.

Given a choice I would have loved to stay in this organization and fulfill my duties as a volunteer. However since I shifted residence from Andheri to Borivali, travelling to the YMCA 3 days in a week was becoming a problem especially because I had to reach their centre at the right time every evening. Despite my attempts at continuing this association I failed to extend my volunteer period in this lovely organization. I still go to visit my children regularly whenever I am in Andheri.

2) Samabhavana Society Organization Profile Samabhavana Society is an ISO 9001:2008 certified, registered Non Profit Community based Organization (NGCBO), adhering to mental and social wellness of individuals, irrespective of their gender, age and sexuality. Their purpose is to work courageously in society in the area of sexuality. They are
committed to support deprived sections of communities to achieve their rights.

Their Modus Operandi is as follows: Integration rather than differentiation by involving and sensitizing the society towards the stigmatized issues, thereby making the social environment more conducive to live and co exist for all Creating safe environment by gradually developing a full-fledged support center for stigmatized persons to help them will deal with Identity, Counseling, Advocacy and Crisis Management. Human Rights and Advocacy - Archaic laws protecting abusers of power, allowing interruption of childhood, ignoring violence within family, criminalizing alternate sexualities need to be repealed and a new set of laws need to be ushered in giving legal recognition to DIGNITY IN LIFE. Building International Bridges of Friendship by learning from the international experiences in this struggle, they create rich experience bank to help them on their mission. They also forge alliances with international organizations for financial and knowledge support . Fighting 'The AIDS' menace by encouraging safer sex practices, counseling to the affected and the infected, day care shelter for the infected along with nutrition and a vocational center for the affected and

the infected. They intend to use all mediums including developing an India specific portal to spread awareness about HIV and AIDS . Cultural Activities They use Art, Media and Culture to communicate with our target groups and society. The organization is has its head office in Mumbai, along with project offices in Pune and Mathura My Role as a Volunteer The role that i played at Samabhavana was completely different to the one i played at the Andheri Boys Home. Since the NGO as such addresses extremely sensitive issues like Gender and Sexuality, volunteers and NGO members themselves are not allowed to do field work in the above areas without an extensive training in the same. My role primarily involved:  Assisting Mr. Jasmir Thakur, the chief operations officer in charge of the head office in Mumbai in conceptualising and planning a new child project to be initiated in schools across Mumbai & Navi Mumbai  The name of the project as decided by Samabhavana was SMILE Students Mastering Important Life Skills Education. The project aims at addressing the growing issue of Child Abuse amongst children by training them by way of Games and Interactive sessions to Understand, Protect, Report and most importantly recognize to act. The Program also involves adults (Parents & Teachers) on how to Prevent, Recognize and Report Child abuse, which is non stigmatizing.  I was made responsible for developing the outreach program to implement SMILE in schools across the city. This involved contacting a large number of school principals, meeting them, speaking about the program, convincing them by showing them the importance of the same.  I also helped in developing the core theme of the whole project Good Touch vs Bad Touch The SMILE program essentially was a project for which the children/schools had to pay a basic amount for Samabhavana to organize its professionals to conduct the above workshops in schools. But after the first few meetings i realized that it would be impossible to run this program relying purely on the funding from schools. Hence both Jasmir Sir and me decided to organize a charity event a Rock Concert that would help us fund the above projects and at the same time become a platform to launch the campaign against discrimination of children. With this we started working on the concert and decided to name it, Rock for Dignity in keeping with Samabhavanas vision Dignity for all. Inspite of a 3 month long process that involved endless number of meetings with sponsors, media representatives and other stakeholders, we experienced terrible disappointment when our Title Sponsor for the above event backed out without offering any reason/explanations for the same. We took this in our stride and are still in the process of finding sponsors for the SMILE program. I still visit Samabhavana Society at least thrice or four times a month to continue the process of implementing project SMILE!

Reflection and Analysis about the NGOs intervention I have learnt about the following projects that Samabhavana is involved in through active intervention Project Setu: Samabhavana Societies Project Setu in Matura & Mumbai is based on Backward Integration of the Migrant Community of Masseurs, which builds capacities of the Adolescent Boys & Youth at the source to create income generation possibilities so as to reduce migration to Mumbai, the program includes Organic Farming, Dairy, Goatery, Vocational Skills training on Agro Based Business and Non Agro Based Initiatives, which is equally partnered by women for their skills development in 36 villages of 10 blocks of Mathura District and in Mumbai it will Integrate Vocational Skills building process for Rehabilitation of the Adolescent Boys and Youth from Massage Trade. Urban Under Privileged Women and Youth: In technical collaboration with Takshashila Development Services will develop process of dispersing small loans to Urban Under Privileged Women for income generation and also provide livelihood options for drop outs of 7th standard BMC schools through Soft and Vocational Skills Training. Job placement for Boys & Youth Samabhavana is collaborating with Boys in job placement with V-SHESH V-shesh is a Chennai based social enterprise that assists first-time job-seekers in rural / non-metro areas to reach out to jobs and women /youth in rural areas to generate supplemental income by selling relevant products or offering relevant services. v-shesh provides staffing services (Livelihood Services) to organisations which hire entry level staff and provide execution support services to organisations (Market Access Services) which are looking to reach rural / small town / low-income consumers. We are currently working include Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Rajasthan, etc.

Reflection and Analysis about my role as volunteer I started off as a volunteer at Samabhavana Society but have almost become one of its workforce! My time at Samabhavana has taught me a number of things. I have listed a few below: y The difficulties of running an NGO: I realized this through my regular interactions with Mr. Jasmir Thakur. Unlike companies and corporate organizations which are income heavy, NGOs are extremely high on expenses but have limite sources of income. In such a cash strapped state, it becomes increasingly difficult to continue doing good to society Principles: Ones principles are challenged while working in an NGO environment. One often witnesses other organizations/ngos/people making and earning money under the false name of benefit of society and on the other hand there are NGOs which genuinely work for the good of people but lack resources and financial support. Determination: The failure of Rock for Dignity as pointed out by Mr. Jasmir was just one of the many he had experienced and it just made him grow stronger and more determined to do something. This is something I will keep in my mind for the rest of my life. In fact, this is something that makes me revisit Samabhavana even after I have completed the compulsory hours for the SIP program.

Apart from the above programmes I have also been actively involved in socially relevant projects like: Project Care by the Social Service League: The child care programme involved interaction with adopted child for 2 days. On the 1st day, we were made to interact in our very own college hall at St. Xaviers and we played fun activities like drawing, painting, singing, dancing, etc. It was all make the timid hesitant children

to open up and interact with the elder ones make the experience good for them. This helped me build an individual bond with 2 children who I was responsible for over the course of 2 days at Project Care. They were from the Pavement School in VT. The SSL organized a mela for the children as well. This fair included a number of fun games wherein the children got the opportunity to run around and win games by playing with each other and got the opportunity of winning goodies like chocolates, etc. The 2nd day involved some amount of rigorous exercise as the children were taken to a park where they performed activities like treasure hunt, sack racing, etc. All this was to help all children break away from the monotony of their lives. Sports Day with Magic Bus:Magic Bus is an Indian not-for-profit company dedicated to harnessing the power of sports to develop the lives of children in India. They work with children and youth from marginalized communities. Using sports and outdoors as a medium, they empower them to discover and develop their true potential and create opportunities for a better future. I volunteered to help them organize their regional sports day. It was a day long affair and took place in a ground in Byculla. There were a series of sports organized for the children of that area right from sock races, three legged races, football, etc. There were around 200 children from that area who had assembled to have a fun filled day. The children were divided into various groups and each group was assigned a few volunteers. The Sports Day experience really brought back the child in me! I completely believe in Magic Buss principle of Sports for Development.

Overall Experience On the whole the SIP program has been a huge eye opener for me. It has helped me understand the social sector and view it with a completely different perspective. It has enabled me to understand the key social issues that i am really passionate about Education and Poverty and most importantly, it has given me an opportunity to go ahead and make a difference in the above sectors. The organizations that i have worked with and the people i have met in the process have really taught me important life lessons as mentioned above. Most importantly, it has helped me realize how lucky I am to have everything that I need to keep me happy and content as compared to scores of others for whom every day is a battle in itself! My life has definitely changed for the better through SIP !