A Centre for Learning at Sittilingi Village

Naikutti children in Thulir

This is the first posting of this year. We Wish you all a very Happy New Year ahead.

From 24th December, the Christmas holidays for the local Government. school
began. So the children were free during the day and we thought it would be
good to have them come during the day to Thulir, so that we can have extended
period of activities.

The children were happy about this [there is a consistent demand from
Sittilingi children that we open during the mornings during the holidays].
The children from Moola Sittilingi decided to stay at home and not come
during the holidays. Many of them, stayed back to help their families with
the harvest. But there was an unexpected request. A couple of children from the village Naikutti [6 km away, from where our trainee Anbu comes], expressed interest in coming to Thulir during these holidays. We were glad that Thulir could be used by even children who are not in the immediate vicinity.

From a couple of boys in the first day, it went on to become a group of nine
boys by the end of the week! Most of these boys study in Government boarding
schools away from home, and were home for holidays. A couple of them had
bicycles to cover the 6 km distance, but the rest actually walked all the way
everyday! A couple of them go to the Sittilingi school but don’t find time
in the evenings to come to Thulir as they live far away.

The activities during this week ranged from paper folding, to drawing and painting, to watching a video on bacteria. On the day of the video show, we also had Madaiyan [who is from this area, got trained as a lab technician and works in the tribal hospital. Madaiyan brought a microscope and some slides
of blood cells and also TB bacteria from the hospital. We also made a slide
of onion peel to look at plant cells.

We finally have started the cooking of diet supplement for the children
starting last month. It is a simple Ragi porridge or boiled channa right now.

This is the time of the year when Thulir usually has a lot of visitors. This
year the following visitors have come to Thulir.

Ramasubramanian:

an old friend and a mechanical engineer who specialises in design, manufacture
and erection of micro-hydro power plants, he shared his experiences of work
with the children. He also enjoys origami and taught the children some paper
folding.

Music teacher, Udaya Banu:

He teaches music at the tribal school in Gudalur Nilgiris,and is currently
visiting us as we write this. So there is much singing, laughter and fun in Thulir!!

Carolyn and Patti:

Friends of Thulir from UK, who come every winter to Sittilingi ,are back in
Sittilingi. Carolyn has brought some more learning materials from UK. Some of
the materials she had brought last time proved very useful [like the
interlocking cubes, and triangular dominoes for math learning]. Patti, you
may remember, last year had introduced clay work to the children. There is
much excitement in Thulir in anticipation of more Clay work and firing of
the oven.

Vediappan goes to Bangalore!

Vediappan, has passed his last exam of class 12. After his exams, got over in September, he felt he needed to look for a job and so has taken a job with a bag making factory in Bangalore. He has been working for the past one month there. While excited at being in a new place and getting new experiences, he is also home sick and exhausted from hard work.

His work shifts are 12 hours long each day for 6 days a week. Being Christmas/ New Year season, he is required to work for 4 hours of overtime above the 12 hr shift. He is paid 1400 rupees, half of which he has to pay his employer for board and lodge.He keeps in contact with Thulir through phone calls.

There is a common urge amongst youth of his age in Sittilingi to go out and see the world. There is also pressure to get a job and look after themselves financially. We feel this is a challenge for us. We need to work out programmes where in Thulir students can go as exchange students to other learning instituitions for a period of time to gain exposure and confidence.

This blog is for the purpose of updating all friends of Thulir about activities at Thulir. As you know, the Thulir website does have a news section, but we are able to update it only once every 4 months or so. Of course, we do send out the news updates to our mailing lists once every 2 months.

We thought we would like to experiment with blogging as a means of more quicker sharing of events at Thulir. Do write back your comments to improve this further.The Thulir web site has been updated and the design changed this month. Do have a look [Thulir], if you haven’t looked at it already.

clay work

Sittilingi, 07 december 2005

We decided to celebrate the coming out of the sun [after weeks of rains and cloudy days], by moving outdoors and doing some clay work, last week. The various pieces made by the children are drying in the shade getting ready for firing. If the weather holds [there is a cyclonic storm in the making over the Bay of Bengal as this is being written!], we hope to fire them soon.