MoM of Monthly Meeting Chennai-Sep'12

Date & Time: 02.30pm to 06.00pm ,16th September,2012
Venue: Montford School, Azarkhana,Chennai
No. of Attendees:34

Agenda:
1.Attendees sharing about a book/movie they like.
2.Talk by Guest-"Bharathi Krishnakumar"-Short film maker, Education activist. on Education scenario in India and relevance of NGOs like Vazhai
3.Next Workshop initiation & discussion.

Activities:
1) 02.30pm-03.00pm Volunteers introduced themselves and shared about a book/movie they like.The session was cut short since the guest arrived.
2) 03.00 to 05.00 pm Guest for the Meeting Mr. Bharathi KrishnaKumar, addressed the attendees on "Education in Indian scenario & relevance of NGOs like Vazhai".
Few points delivered are:

• The Quality of Education in India is not very much encouraging. Especially, rural poor students are deprived of quality education.

• History of Educational system in Tamilnadu. Appreciated the former chief minister Kamaraj for his efforts to improve rural primary & secondary education, by implementing various schemes.

• Issue of dropouts from Education. Only 18% of those enroll for education reaches graduation level.

• The assessment system considers only the marks scored in 10th/12th. The performance in other standards are not being taken into consideration.

• Emphasized the need for continuing reservation system in education for socially backward people, though some creamy people are misusing the reservation and some really needy socially forward caste people are deprived of reservation

• Appreciated NGOs like Vazhai for reaching out to the rural students and support them in continuing the education and in addressing other difficulties they face. Also appreciated the volunteers of vazhai for contributing back to the society.

3) 05.00pm -06.00pm Forthcoming Workshop Discussion

The Workshop theme is decided to be "Communcation Development", since the same theme is being considered by Bangalore team
WS Dates: 13th & 14th, October,2012
WS Execution team: The two Mentoring teams coordinated by Kalyan & vijayalakshmi will drive the WS preparation & execution.
Points discussed on WS theme & content:

• Main idea of the sessions to improve the communication skills of the wards.

• Volunteers to come up with ideas related to communication development and discuss them in the forum

• To target the wards who are all identified as shy and those require lot of support in improving their communication. The list to be prepared well ahead of the WS and track their participation in the WS sessions.

• A meeting scheduled with Life skill expert Mr. Muthaiah Ramanathan, for preparing activity based sessions on 29th Sep,2012 @ Montford school.

• To play inspirational videos such as Para-Olympics athelets' shining performance,etc.,

• To have sessions for arts & crafts like drawing, Toy making using clay., etc.

• Decided to have the Mock-WS on 07th, Oct,2012 @ Montford school.