Last Sunday in Jamnagar

Tomorrow we'll start in our last week here in Jamnagar. Since the team presentations will take probably 1 1/2 days and our flight back to Mumbai is already on Friday, we took the time today to work on our final presentations.
And while we were sitting at our common room doing some work, Girish and his team entered and gave us some presents "with best compliments from Hotel Aram" :-) So we won't forget this place anymore...for sure we wouldn't have done so anyway.

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SHOPPING again and again & again....followed by reception @ Essar Oil Club

It's so hard...I just cannot resist on buying some nice clothes or jewellery. Yesterday night we went directly to a jewellery to buy anklets. Indian women are wearing these on both feed all the time. Some of them have little vibrating bells on it, so you could hear them at each step. Really nice... I shared one with Claudia and each of us has now one to wear in combination with our Kurtas and Saris.

This morning we went again to the market and I went for another 3 scarfs...these clothes here are so beautiful - I guess I will never ever meet my 15kg package weight anymore. We also bought some Bindi, the dots you can glue on the forehead.
Mamtha (IBM colleague from Bangalore, responsible for Business development) came back for today's reception at the Essar Oil Club. So in the afternoon she helped Paula and me to wrap our Saris before going to the Oil Club.

Not so easy...

...but with the expert guidance...

...it worked out pretty well!

At the reception the Essar foundation honored their volunteers who attended the program in the last year. Everybody of our team had also to do a short speech about where we are from and what experiences we made.

We have been specially honored

Video recording about our project

The whole event was followed by a great indian buffet - delicious!

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Essar Health Center & meet parents

That the Essar foundation is doing great things for the governmental education throughout the villages around their plant, is already known. Today this got another new dimension: their Health Care Center. 

The Essar Health Care Center

 Since the availability of medical advises in the villages is very limited, Essar runs a Health Care Center where all people get free medical care. There are doctors and nurses available as well as all kinds of medications. For emergencies there is also an ambulance vehicle which could bring the people to the next hospital.
Besides our visit to their facilities, we met some parents there and had the chance to interview them regarding (English) education.

 The traditional understanding of finding the right partner, getting married and starting a family is still predominant. While learning a profession has less priority. So this is another important topic we need to keep in mind when writing our recommendations.

The day ended with a social dinner

non-koriander dish - love it!!!!

and the legendary rikshaw ride.

I for sure will miss it...

...and the others probably too :-)

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Happy Birthday: Anton!

Today was basically a very intense working day at the hotel. We did a lot of research and tried to specify the program and its initiatives we recommend for the two pilot schools we selected. The selection is mainly based on the teacher's level of English, the general (teacher, children, principal) motivation to improve their English and the existing infrastructure.
At the first step, there will be just two pilot schools for one year - but the expansion won't get lost on track.


Today is also Anton's 31st Birthday. The best reason to surprise him with a nice party at the common room. The only wish he had for us was: Meat for dinner!!! :-)
So we organized the delivery of meat dishes from a restaurant, girish organized an indian decoration of the room - and party got started :-)

Slice the birthday cake

PARTY!!!! :-)

Happy Birthday Anton!

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light bulb moment: sanskrit

Today was a very focused working day in our project office at Essar's.

One important fact I didn't know so far is that English is really the fourth language indian school children learn. Of course - a lot of people said so before, but I always thought, "sanskrit" is more focused on notation teaching - but that's not true! Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of hindi and all other regional indian languages. Like Latin for all indo-germanic languages.
So that means, these children are learning 4 languages simultaneously from the 5th to the 8th grade and higher. Wow...
A fact, which makes it even more important to consider any options about activity-based learning and alternative teaching methods, and to support the language teachers to improve their on language skills.

Today also a new "welcome graphic" at the Essar entrance hall was made - this time with colored sand instead of rice. Always impressing...:-)

double precision required :-)

each sand grain is in place

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Essar refinery visit and meeting with the district's education officer

After a constructive discussion about our ideas, which objectives they face and how we further should work on them, we were able to visit Essar's oil refinery. We have been to the laboratories, their control center and drove through the storage area where their final products are stored. In accordance to all security guidelines, everybody had to wear a helmet and safety shoes.

...better be safe... :-)

IBMers wearing security helmets

 After this impressing journey we had a meeting with the district's education officer. He is responsible for more than 1700 schools throughout the Jamnagar area. This meeting gave us an overview about what is centrally given by the government and what can be done by the district itself, respectively the extent of flexibility which is given. 
He assured that he reflects our findings and recommendations to his next hierarchical level. 

Meeting with the district's education officer

Tomorrow is a day where first meetings with the parents are supposed to take place.


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3rd week started with a hotel working day

Since it takes us every day 2 hours of travel to go to Essar's and back, we decided to spend another day in the hotel to work very focused on our data analysis and first ideas for the solution.

Concentrated work session

So what we basically did so far is:
we tried to figure out which assessment dimensions are relevant for the children's level of English. Apart from the teacher's level of english there are some infrastructural reasons,  general "vibe" of the school and how supportive the community/the village is. Also the role of the principal and the parents is important. A bit
challenging is the bias we got, when interviewees told us they they have a 100%-solution on all dimensions.
But of course, we will handle that. We already brainstormed some good ideas like internships, university partnerships, new methods in teaching and ways of visual informal exposure in the classrooms.

Tomorrow will be a special day, cause our colleagues from the Essar foundation team organized us a guided tour through the oil refinery. I'm really looking forward...