Happy Independence Day!

Today, India celebrates its 67th Independence Day and we were invited to join two wonderful celebrations!

In the morning we visited our Essar project colleages and saw some amazing performances. We were warmly welcomed and even officially greeted by our hosts and then the day started with the flag raising ceremony, where rose petals appeared as the Indian flag was raised to the National anthem. Wow!

The event was then followed by some great performances of the Essar school (which e.g. included karate, judo, songs, poems and Gujarati dances) and you could clearly see how proud the children were of their school and community!

A personal favourite for me was the performance of the security dog squad - very impressive and I'd not suggest for anyone to try and mess with them...!

Here's a picture of us with the team just before we headed for some nice chai.

After a quick shopping trip to the local mall (which is much more structured than the in-town supermarket), we headed back to the hotel and (via an actually quite nice riksha-ride - I must be getting used to this...) to the Independence Day celebrations of the "Happy Children Centre" in one of the towns slums.

Our riksha driver also revealed a "secret weapon" during the trip and treated us to some (one-channel only) in-riska entertainment of which I captured a little video - hope you enjoy it!

 The celebrations in the Happy Children centre were very different to the ones we'd seen in the morning but equally fascinating. Almost 100 children meet in one classroom after school each day- to catch up and get some additional training through fun learning activities.

For today the children had studied for almost 2 months to learn songs and dances and performed them in front of us and their peers to great cheers and applause:

  The energy in the room was contagious and after two hours we all left with some big smiles on our faces (which quickly vanished after we saw the state our shoes were in - which we had left outside the classroom in a 2-hour monsoon shower on a muddy path.... not a great idea...)

What an amazing day though and we feel priviledged to have been able to share these celebrations with our project partners!

I'm also able to report that I must be starting to "fit in" as the local mosquitos - who so far had not touched me - seem to find me quite tasty all of a sudden... (or they have discovered their taste for English breakfast... ;-) If I get my revenge though, they will not only get my blood but also the stomach bug I managed to catch yesterday. Watch out for some petitions to the Jamnagar mosquito union requesting loads of toilet paper and banning foreigners... :-)

Will post again shortly but will take a rest now as tomorrow is another early start and we have a lot to do - we'll be visiting 3 of the 16 local governement schools and want to make sure we capture as much information on how they teach English (and what they think could be done to improve this) as possible.

Good night & goodbye!

P.S.: Irish Water support services team - am thinking of you tomorrow for your big deliverables and hope all will go well! Hang in there - you can do it!

World record in chanting anyone?

I can’t believe how time flies and that we’ve been here for 4 days already.

Yesterday we went for some sightseeing in Jamnagar which started with a riksha-ride I thought would be my last… We are getting more and more adventurous as the days go by and thought it would be a good idea to go for one of the bigger riksha’s (officially licensed for 5 people, but that doesn’t seem to deter any self-respecting driver from trying to fit 9 people in; 2 in the front, 4 in the middle and 3 at the back…). I drew the “lucky straw” and ended up at the back on a tiny wood bench, seeing not only the road but also my life so far passing by… The trip took about 20mins and I think I must have been a cat in a previous life, as I certainly felt like I died at least 6 times during the ride…

Miraculously we all survived though and reached our destination, Lakhota lake. Our tour started off by visiting the Bala Hanuman temple which has managed to get into the Guinness Book of records for the longest continuous chanting of “Ram Dhun”. Apparently, the chanting has been going on for 49 years and I’ve managed to capture about 10 seconds of this momentous event here.

It was very interesting to see how the current singer was supported by ca. 5 back-up singers (“in case he dies” – no joke!)

We then went to see Lakhota fort, which is in the middle of the lake and once belonged to the Maharaja of Nawanagar.

 

Apologies to those of you who may want to visit Jamnagar at some point – but there is actually not a lot to see in the Fort…. I quite liked the little statues though, similar to the one below.

 After we ticked “culture”, we decided we needed some retail therapy and headed to one of the two local supermarkets and stocked up on some essentials. Supermarkets here are fun; very crowded and not very structured (or the structure is too complicated for me to understand). But you can get everything there and we were very pleased to find chocolates, juice, coke, muesli, crisps etc. (but sadly for Gica, no meat… :-(

Today was all about meeting our new project partners

and we had a great day. The projects sound even more exciting now and we can’t wait to get started. We’ll be going to the client site tomorrow for the first time, visit local schools on Wednesdat and on Thursday get to take part in the township celebrations for the National Independence day. So a lot to look forward to and I’ll keep you posted!

Also, there’s a correction I need to make to the last blog – it was not the Eagle but the cookaboro that landed! Hello Irish Water  & SSE teams: You'll be pleased to know that so far no one has attempted to kidnap the bird! Btw - he’s still traumatised by what you did to him (and has frequently requested counselling... :-)

P.S.: Some people are telling me that there is a problem with posting comments on my blog entries – I’ll try to fix this and given that I’m surrounded by real IT SMEs, chances are good that we will get this to work. Until then, please be patient and I do look forward to hearing from you!

The Eagle has landed!

Welcome to Jamnagar everyone! 

After a 9 hour overnight flight from London (where I actually managed to get some sleep) I arrived in Mumbai on Friday morning where the airport was much less crowded than expected. It took only 5mins to get through immigration (no queue!) and our luggage was delivered 5mins later. Wow!

We were told the airport was so quiet, as India observes eid as public holiday, so most people had left the city for a long weekend.

After a quick check in at the hotel (just in case anyone ever wonders – the Hotel Planet Residency in Mumbai is not a 5 star hotel, as some webpages seem to indicate – unless you award one star for windows, one for a door, one for each of the aircons and one for a bed ;-) we went for some food at the highly recommended “Green House”. Delicious!

Going to and from the restaurant required us to get one of the auto-rikshas (some form of motorbike with a bench and roof which can apparently fit 5 (!) people…). It was “interesting” and I now understand why ca. 100 people are killed everyday in Mumbai alone in traffic… Keith has put a video of the ride on his blog, so have a look for yourself... But our drivers were careful(ish) and we made it to and back from the hotel in one piece (but for the evening meal we decided to walk to a restaurant…)

Here’s a picture of Paula (from Brazil) and Claudia (from Mexico) in the riksha:

And here is one from me, less clear as it really was VERY bumpy in the riksha...

 Today we took the flight to Jamnagar

(YES, this - emergency exit! - window was shut closed with tape…!!!!!)

and discovered that the flight from Mumbai is the only commercial flight to Jamnagar each day (the rest of the time the airport is used for military flights only).

Here’s a first glimpse of the city from the air

and one from the airport (and yes, this IS a tractor pulling the stairs for us to embark…)

We’ve spent the rest of the day sorting out currency exchange, SIM cards and (most importantly for some of us) our liquor license… More about this to follow later, so watch this space.

Now it’s off to get some sleep as we’ve been warned that tomorrow will be an intense day.

The countdown has started... 10 days to go...

It's only 10 days now until we head off to India and it's all starting to feel very "real" now... The flights are booked, the vaccinations completed, our visas are sorted and I've started to wonder how I will fit everything into the suitcase... (and top tips from anyone on how to squeeze 4 weeks of packing into a 15kg bag are highly appreciated... ;-)

We have had some initial calls with the teams in India already (and got an idea of how reliable the phone lines are likely to be...) and are also busy sending some more information about us to the team prior to actually meeting them in 2 weeks time. Here's a little video from our team to our colleagues from the Essar foundation (please don't laugh:-)

Also, we are all busy blogging about the programme, so if you want to have a look at what the others who will join me in Jamnagar are saying, have a look here:

Elyse and her blog:

Gica & his blog:

 

Katrin's blog:

  

This is Keith enjoying a cuppa- look here for his blog:

Malcolm and his blog:

And last, but not least, click here for Peter's blog:

The next update will be very shortly before I leave (or even after I've arrived in India) - can't wait to actually get to India after almost 3 months of preparation now.

The projects have been announced - soooo excited!

Last week we heard about the projects we'll be working on and now I'm even more excited about going to Jamnagar!

The ten of us will be working in three teams with local communities and enterprises on the following challenges:

"Going native":
Malcolm, Claudia and Anton will work with SAVA (Saurasha Voluntary Actions) to develop a management systems & business plan for the Farmers-Producers Organization at Jamnagar. The idea is to spread the spirit of volunteering among the people of Saurashtra and ultimately achieve sustainable rural development through the management of natural resources, increased access and supervision to public resources, and mobilising private resources for the common good. SAVA have asked for recommendations for accounting and financial, organizational structure, personnel and HR, information and reporting processes for a producers company having ca. 3500 shareholders and  (Rs. 75,00,000) annual turnover as well as helping with a business plan for the company which deals in input supply, trade, processing, storage, and educational activities. SAVA's first attemt to help farmers with the challenges faced have failed due to problems with the business partner selected - so no pressure now for us...  

"Happy children":
Keith, Emily and Peter have been asked to develop a five year strategy plan to expand and develop up to 60 “Happy Children Center” for deprived slum children in Jamnagar city. The Chaitanya Charitable Trust (CCT) already runs three "Happy Children Centres" to encourage deprived children such as child labourers, rag pickers, and children who had to drop out of school to take up and stay in education e.g. through access to libraries, games, access to technology and extracuricular activities. The Charity's growth plan is to establish a total of 60 centres by 2016 which would benefit up to 3,000 children! As part of this, the CCT have asked our team to review its current marketing, branding and messaging techniques and strategies and make recommendations for increasing funding. They'd also like us to review the Happy Children Centre programme and make recommendations to improve the design and offerings to deliver on their growth targets.


"Better English":
Working with the Essar Group Foundation, Elyse, Gica, Paula, Katrin and I will work on improving the quality of English Language Teaching in Government Schools in and around Jamnagar. As part of its corporate social responsibilty programme, the Essar Foundation has taken a keen interest in improving the quality of teaching and learning of English as this increases people's changes for employment and supplies them with a highly valueable skill in a globalised world. To help with this, we've been asked to

• assess current challenges and make recommendations on how the quality of English education in government schools can be improved, 
• come up with creative ideas on how we can leverage the Essar foundation volunteer programmes to help improve English education for students and 
• design an education fair in 2014 which will focus on Englisch language teaching and learning. 

Our partners from the Essar foundation are clearly much better versed in digital technology than I am and have even produced a little introductory video for us!

So here is a sneak preview of the Jamnagar Essar CSR team, Awadhesh, Deependra and Diti:

I'm sure there'll be more pictures from them once we meet in Jamnagar - but for now it's over to me to try and create a little video to introduce myself to them... Any creative ideas on this are of course highly welcome!

Watch this space for more updates on the projects and the final preparations prior to our Jamnagar experience in August!
 

Typical English?

Like in most countries, in India gifts are a way of communicating respect, appreciation and friendship.

As such, we've been asked to take some little presents to give to our hosts and people we may meet during the programme. They should not be extravagant and ideally something typical of/representative for the country we come from.


So far I've excluded tea, alcohol and leather (all for obvious reasons :-) but have yet to have a brainwave as to what to take with me that would make a nice (as well as light, easily "packable" and typical) gift from the UK.


Any thoughts and ideas?

Pre-work has started!

Together with Anton (from Slovakia), Claudia (from Mexico), Elyse & Emily (both from the US), Gica (from the Czech Republic), Katrin & Peter (both from Germany), Keith (from Canada), Malcolm (from Australia), and Paula (from Bazil), I'll be preparing for the time in India over the coming weeks, ready for our departure to Mumbai in August.

We have weekly meetings with Flavio (who went to Kalkutta last year as part of the CSC and is our team facilitator) & a comprehensive training calendar to give us a fighting chance to add some value to the communities of Jamnagar! It's all really interesting and so far we've learned about our own styles & cultural differences between our respective home-countries and India. We've also heard from teams who went to India as part of the CSC - am now really hoping for "European toilets" :-)

Watch this space for more news on how the pre-work goes & of course any hints and tips on do's and don'ts when in India are highly welcome!