Doing away with the cookie cutter: why development requires listening to people and why one size doesn't fit all

Sailing into the port of Mumbai you could be fooled into thinking it was Hudson Bay, New York. The skyline is littered with skyscrapers – beautiful modern constructions: glass, curved, multistory and helipad-roofed. Of course, closer inspection of the city from the ground reveals quite a different sight. Looking down rather than up, sprawling slums nest around the bases of high-rises – the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty for which Mumbai is infamous. But this this chronic Indian wealth disparity is not the subject of this particular piece. Rather, I want to highlight the misfit of many of India’s recent “development solutions” for the country itself, starting with these buildings.  It is a misfit for which I believe India has the Western world to thank. 

Mumbai by night

Environmentalists argue that recent increased air temperatures in Mumbai are directly linked to the numbers of new glass skyscrapers in the city. The glass used in these buildings streamlines sunrays, magnifying their intensity, creating a literal greenhouse effect within the buildings. This then requires vast amounts of A/C energy consumption to cool the buildings back down, and this dramatic increased energy use is heating up the whole city. Most of these glass buildings are either corporate offices or hotels, supporting the ever-increasing number of foreign workers in the city. The modernity of the buildings has brought Mumbai up to par with its global economic counterparts: New York, London, Tokyo, Shanghai as a legitimate centre of business and commerce. It almost seems that without such modernity, Mumbai is somehow left behind as a world player in big business. In rainy London and chilly New York, the greenhouse skyscraper design works well. The glass buildings save on heating costs as they warm up quickly with just a little sun. But in India they make absolutely no sense when a less expensive alternative could, by design, keeps its interior cool. This is a classic example of cookie cutter model failure: a design that works in the West, but fails elsewhere.

I must confess I cannot take credit for noting this fact about the buildings. Social and environmental investment advisor, Neeraj Doshi, brought it to my attention when he presented at the recent training conference for fellows of the IDEX Fellowship in Social Enterprise. The IDEX programme, for which I am a field coordinator, puts recent graduates from India and worldwide in 10-month placements with local social enterprises or schools in India. The aim of the programme is to give fellows the opportunity to learn about socially driven enterprise in India from an on the ground perspective, developing their own solutions to problems by getting a field understanding of the need.

I believe Doshi’s point about the misfit of the Mumbai buildings rings true above and beyond climate conditions. I spent last year as an IDEX fellow myself in Hyderabad, working in an affordable private school serving the low-income community in the old and orthodox Muslim part of the city. My job was to identify challenges the school faced and develop and implement sustainable solution programmes to help them. One of my central projects was to help develop a learning difficulty scheme to improve the situation for the children in the school identified as “basic learners”. I started my research, as many do, with trusty Google, thinking about the kinds of support children with learning difficulties receive in my home country, England.  In the UK, the government offers testing of children with learning difficulties and provides lots of great resources for free. After some research, I discovered exactly the same opportunities for government testing exist in India, and it was a simple case of getting kids to a testing centre in Hyderabad. I triumphantly announced this discovery in my school and was surprised and disheartened to be met with very little enthusiasm and a lot of anxious head bobbles. I couldn’t see the problem. One teacher eventually explained. “None of the parents will go for it,” she told me, “over here that’s basically a doctor certifying that your child as stupid.”

Working with mothers in school

Another case of cookie cutter failure, this time on my part. It had never occurred to me that something like parent attitudes would be powerful enough to prevent the success of something so logically valuable. It took me a while to get this information out of the teachers – people in India don’t like to be the bearer of bad news, particularly when talking to foreigners – and it was only because I had developed a particularly close relationship with this one teacher, that I found out at all.  I had to rethink my whole approach, this time starting from an understanding of parent, teacher and student motivations. If I had pushed forward with my original plan of getting kids tested, I could have done some real damage. I learnt my lesson that day – rather than trying to fix people, how about actually listening to them.

The Human Centered Design toolkit www.hcdconnect.org is an incredible resource developed by IDEO and the Gates Foundation for people working in development. HDC is about putting people first. Rather than working from problem straight to strategy hypothesis, you must first take a step back to understanding the motivations of all the key stakeholders in any one situation. IDEX fellows train in this kind of design thinking and try to bring in this approach to the work we do in India.

We did still make headway with the learning difficulty programme at my Hyderabad school. It involved a film screening for the parents of the as fantastic Taare Zameen Par, a Bollywood blockbuster by Aamir Khan about a boy growing up in India with dyslexia, as well as a session led by a local respected a Muslim lady explain to the parents, in Urdu, that learning difficulties just mean a different style of learning. Often dyslexic children are more creative and have high IQ’s than others. Since then, a number of children in the school have received government testing, through the choice of the parents, and are now benefitting from extra exam time, scribes and free resources.

One size does not, and should not, fit all

Anyone wishing to work in development should be prepared to get their hands dirty. It’s not possible to help people by appealing to their needs without meeting them, seeing their life or listening to the things that matter to them. The process of really understanding the needs of a community cannot be carried out in a few days as a period of time is required to build up the relationships which facilitate honest and genuine conversations.  Afterall, people are proud. You wouldn’t tell a total stranger the things that keep you up all night such as the worries you have about your children’s future or your inability to pay bills, so why should those that are poor or uneducated?

Sometimes, I believe people who work in development get so wrapped up in the business plan, the models and the jargon, that they can lose sense the most important part of the project process: the people that they are trying to help in the first place.  People are not cookies, and one shape does not fit all. Social enterprise and human centred design, with hands on research as well as implementation is, in my view, the only way forward.

Update: Spoken English Program

A little while back I posted about the Spoken English Program I devised with a couple of other IDEX fellows for schools here.  Yesterday, I saw this video that Faisal has made of the program running at his school showing the student progress over a couple of months. It's a heart-warming watch. 

 

The program is now officially running in 12 schools and reaching out to more than 1000 children in Hyderabad. We've seen both successes and failures along the way, and found that some schools have been able to integrate it very well into their curriculum, whereas others have struggled. The next steps for us are to share the program with more school leaders at the owners' meeting next week to encourage more schools to pilot the program. Then we shall study impact assessment, noting which elements within each school have led to its success or failure, in order to make revisions to the syllabus before handing it over to next year's cohort of fellows.

Careering forward

Something Arif, my school owner, requested specific help with was providing careers guidance to students in their final years at school.  Alliance, like most other Indian APS’s runs up to 10^th standard, age 16. From there, anyone who wants to study further, either at university or doing some practical qualification such as teacher training, must first complete the +2 (sixth form) at a college. Without this, their options are to find an unskilled job somewhere, or else just get married.

I remember being 16 and feeling the pressure of having to make a decision about the direction of my life. The multitude of questions rolling around ones head at that age are pretty intimidating (still are aged 23 in fact!): What’s my ambition? Do I continue to study? If so, where? And what? What do my parents want from me? What do my teachers think? What are my friends going to do? And most of all, if a make a wrong choice, can I reverse it?

Back home in Oxford, I was given advice left, right and centre from teachers, parents and friends and from there I was able to make some informed choices. I was also given practical guidance about which steps were needed to take to achieve my goals. Some students at Alliance, those with educated and aware parents, will also get this kind of guidance and support, but many will be on their own.  Sadly, a great number of parents here believe that their investment in their child’s education need not go further than paying their school fees and expect the school to take full ownership of all areas of educational development. And this means that the responsibility for careers guidance falls solely upon that of the teachers.

Arif, is fully aware of this fact and was keen to run sessions with higher classes teaching them about choices available and showing them what steps they need to take now to achieve their future goals. Although certainly a noble cause, this eagerness to push careers is not entirely selfless – for Arif, students who know their goals are likely to focus harder on their studies, meaning his school results are likely to improve.  Furthermore, parents who see children getting themselves into good jobs and earning money are more likely to send their other kids to the school too, or recommend it to their friends and neighbours. But none of this is a bad thing, in my opinion.

Junior Achievements

Zach and Shruti guiding groups of students through the
JA program at Alliance

So to kick off our careers events, back in November we ran a Junior Achievements training session with 9^th and 10^th standard.  JA is an external service provider and international non-profit organisation which trains volunteers in a set of careers counselling sessions to share with groups of young people. The IDEX fellows were lucky to be given training as JA session leaders early on in the fellowship.  More than one trainer is needed per session so we’ve been sharing each other’s human resource and helping out at different schools. Four other fellows helped me run the day at Alliance.

The main aim of JA is to get students thinking outside the box with regards to their future. Ask a group of Indian APS students what they want to be when they grow up and you’ll be pushed to hear more than 3 answers: doctor, advocate or engineer. (Funnily enough, very few say teacher!) Many of them are simply not aware of the huge array of options out there, and it is this that JA specifically looks to change. First we ask students to think not about jobs, but about industry. Name one industry and think about how many jobs are involved in it. Computer industry?  Well we have designers, software engineers and factory workers who assemble the computers. Good. But thinking outsider the box there are many others involved in the process: The salesman in the shop, factory manager, the computer repair person, even the lorry driver who ships the computers from factory to shop.  Within any one industry there are many more jobs that initially meet the eye. And every one is vital to the functioning of that industry.  Once the students see this and then start making lists of all the industries they can think of suddenly the number of jobs out there is dramatically multiplied. It becomes easier for them to imagine themselves in specific roles rather than some kind of vague idea of being, for example, a doctor. After all, chocolate factories need tasters, right? Suddenly being an advocate isn’t quite so appealing…

Everyone engrossed in the chocolate factory video -
a rather mouth watering example of induaty

JA is also about getting students to look internally, to themselves, to think about what skill sets, talents, values they have which would fit with a certain job. Want to be a doctor but faint at the sight of blood? Perhaps that wouldn’t be the best-suited job after all.  One girl told me she was good at singing but was too shy to become a famous singer. Okay, well what about looking after young children – they love to be sung to. Or becoming a music teacher? Or even making jingles for the radio! JA isn’t about giving people answers but about getting them to ask the right questions and look beyond the obvious. This is something that very nicely started off any careers guidance program. And we had a great response from the students at Alliance.

Parent sessions

Post JA, we ran a more job-specific session with students where Arif went through exactly what trainings were needed for actual career roles. Then we did a similar session just with the parents to get them thinking about their children’s futures as is this group that can often present the biggest obstacle to a child’s educational development.

A tough crowd: mothers at our careers talk.
Still a very traditional community in Golconda

A huge number of academic educational studies have shown that children whose parents take an active role in their education do better in school and beyond it and this is something both myself, and Arif, really wanted to relay back to parents of the children in our school. The most important thing was to make them realise that their child’s capacity to educationally develop does not stop as soon as they have left the school building.  A child who is given a healthy and balanced diet, enough sleep, regular exercise and a space in which to study will find it far easier to concentrate at school than those who don’t, who may get ill and have to miss days or who are too tired to focus in class.  The responsibility for ensuring these kinds of things must lie with the parents.  A child who can concentrate and study hard will achieve good results and good results is what the parents want to see.

Arif explained this to a group of burkha-clad mothers and I then talked (with a translator) about the value of education opening up the doors to new opportunities rather than closing them. These parents will have the power to make decisions about whether their children continue to study or whether they must enter into paid work, or even marriage, as soon as they leave school so they too needed to be convinced that it is worth continuing to invest financially in their children’s education. The fact that they have already chosen to pay for the education of their son’s and daughters up to now means they do see this, we just wanted to show the real links there exist between, nurture and support at home, taking an interest and the time to help children to think about their educational development and genuine life success in the future. Arif told me that me, coming from the UK as an independent female, was a good role model for them.  I have a BA and MA qualification and have had the opportunity to work abroad from this.  We wanted to show the parents that with the right support and forward planning this kind of opportunity might some day be open to their children too.

Soft skills knowledge

Our plans for the next couple of months involve running sessions on tips for careers success. I wanted to introduce the idea of “soft skills” – those character traits and knowledge, such as knowing how to present themselves well in an interview, that give people a real advantage over others but which are unlikely to be taught to the kids by their own parents.

Sharing resources: A JA session we ran with
students at another fellow's school

Some other fellows are currently working on creating a job specific presentation and handout explaining to students what exact decisions need to be made now if they want to reach certain careers, such as those who want to become heart surgeons must choose the science option at +2 in college. I am hoping to add to this with a number of practical career advancement presentations based around teaching soft skills on subjects like ‘writing a resume’ and ‘how to tackle an interview’.  The idea with this whole project again, is to create a combined set of resources the take the form of presentations, handouts and lesson plans that can be shared and taken to individual schools by the IDEX fellows and adapted to specific needs of students and staff there: Replicating and scaling.

Although it’s still a while before many students will actually have to be putting these things into practice it is never to early to make people aware of how, no matter where you are in the world, cracking these things makes a tremendous difference later on in life. 

Spoken English: how to teach without teaching

From day one stepping foot in Alliance International School it became very clear to me that improving spoken English was number one on the Principal’s agenda.

Teaching all classes in English is a serious
selling point for the school: parents expect
teachers to deliver

“Watson-Mam, we are so excited you have come to make the all the children fluent in English”. Ah. A simple task then.

The need for English

I won’t deny that students’ English ability is a serious concern for the school. It is common knowledge that children in India who want a decently paid job or to continue into higher education post-school need to speak English. In a country of nearly 30 different languages, English is (sadly) becoming the communal tongue. And since every subject in my school is taught in English, it is crucial that students speak the language in order to progress in all their other classes.  

In my initial case study back in August I reported that the standard of English at Alliance International was pretty high. My classroom observations saw 9^th standard reading British Romantic poetry, and 5^th class explaining without hesitation that, “a noun is a person place or thing”.  Students would happily come and chat to me in break time about Harry Potter or how England will lose the cricket. I didn’t think there was much to worry about. Then, as the weeks ticked on, a few realisations hit me.  The classroom observations were set up and rehearsed ready for my viewing; 9^th grade children had memorised the words “dewy” and “effervescent” in the exact same lesson the previous day. And the children in 5^th could tell me (deep breath) “anounisapersonplaceorthing” but when I asked them what else a noun was in addition to a thing and a place I was received with unanimous blank stares. The students who had come to chat to me were those at the top of the class, sent by the teachers, and the teachers themselves had been told not to speak Hindi in my presence.

A lot of students = a somewhat daunting task

But why? The answer is simple: Culture of pride. To impress foreign visitors is something so deeply instilled in Indian culture that even the school Principal, who had actively requested my help, didn’t want me to see what the reality of the problems were. 

It has now been established that spoken English is a primary concern in school, particularly with students aged between 9 and 11 years, who by now should be able to make conversation and write in full sentences but in truth cannot distinguish between a capital and lower case letter.  One of the main problems is that certain students within every class who speak English relatively well answer all the questions and teachers let those who know very little to remain silently at the back with their heads down.

Developing a curriculum: harder than it sounds...

The key program I’ve been working on to help fix this is to develop a spoken English curriculum for these children.  Being an IDEX fellow, I’ve always got to have two things at the back of my mind: Sustainability and Scalabilty. In other words, any spoken English curriculum that I develop needs to be something that can be used by the school when I am no longer there (i.e. I should not be the teacher), and it needs to be something other IDEX fellows could potentially bring to their own schools. This is the only way to implement genuine change.

Working on some charts for classrooms with Mrs Tahera

All this was kicking around in my head a month ago. All the parts of the great plan for change were there:

1. Problem identified: need for improvement in spoken English in children from 4^th-6^th standard.

2. Solution proposed: a syllabus specifically for spoken English to be written by me and taught in school by another teacher.

3. IDEX considerations: make it scalable and sustainable.

However, I still found myself with one somewhat worrying hole in my plan: I did not have the faintest idea how to go about creating a spoken English syllabus.  

So I did what IDEX fellows do best: I found an expert and got her to show me how it’s done.  I branched out to a wonderful woman called Vaishali, a self proclaimed “kidologist” – trainer of students, teachers and parents for improving spoken English in children.  I spent a day at her house with her and her two kids trawling through English books and learning about all parts of English development.  Vaishali explained to me the importance of “sight words” – words like this, then, his, because – the types of things that make up 70% of all sentences. She also explained how children learn in word groupings: S A T P I N Go through S- nouns first, the A- nouns etc. She told me to bring in visual learning techniques with a “word bank chart”, then get children to form their own sentences and always, always make the children think that learning is fun. It was a great day which gave me a lot of food for thought.

A wealth of resources out there

Next step involved a lot of internet and bookshop trawling to get hold of components and work out how to throw it all together. Google search: Fun classroom games for kids; nouns beginning with S; sample quiz sheets; comprehension papers etc etc. I ended up creating a 4-lesson plan based around a group of 12 sight words and 12 nouns starting with a single letter. Lesson 1 and 2 involve teaching the words to the kids and forming sentences with the words. Lesson 3 is a spoken class – getting kids to fill in worksheets for dialogues then act them out in pairs and to the class. Some of the words in these may overlap from the last two lessons but many won’t. 'This is okay' said Vashali, 'just get them confident about reading aloud'. Lesson 4 is pure fun: take the kids out of the classroom and play games with them in the hall or let them watch a video. This lesson keeps students wanting to do the sessions and focuses them for other lessons in school.

All in all, the IDEX Spoken English Curriculum is going to have 24 lessons. The 4-lesson framework is to be repeated with a different word banks, different dialogues and a different sets of games. The final syllabus pack I envisage will contain six 4-lesson plans based around the six S A T P I N nouns and a whole range of sight words, a list of classroom and active games to choose from, a set of homework sheets to accompany every word grouping and a pack of dialogues. There will also be word bank charts to go up on the wall to keep a notes of all the words taught throughout the term. Every lesson on new words is to build on the ones from before, constantly expanding kids’ vocabularly and developing their confidence in speaking.  The very active way the classes are taught means no kids can be left quietly behind at the back. Everyone gets involved.

Shruti and Faisal hard at work at one of our meetings

Now that this package is very much in the making, the final step has been labour. Constructing this huge document is a really time consuming thing so I’ve approached other IDEX fellows who have a similar urgent need for spoken English in their schools.  Three other fellows have gotten on board and we’ve met a number of times to brainstorm and delegate tasks. They also brought a number of great things to the table that I hadn’t considered. Zach pointed out that this program needed impact assessment so we can see after 24 weeks if it is worth it. He wrote a pre- and post- test to give kids in schools.  Shruti, a native of Hyderabad, revised some of the word banks to choose words that Indian children are more likely to use. Faisal came up with different games he’d been doing with his kids in school in the times he’d been roped into teaching.

Ms. Rizwana,who is taking the classes and myself launch
the spoken english curriculum on parents day in school
At Alliance we are calling it A.E.D.P
Alliance English Development Program

It’s been a really good collaboration and the finished package is now nearly there. Myself and the three other fellows are piloting the program in our schools over the next couple of weeks in order to see if we need to make any revisions before handing it over to others. We are going to present it at the school owners meeting in mid December as a single document for other IDEX fellows to offer in their schools.

Fingers crossed we’ll see results. 

Back to the blogging

It has been a shamefully long time since I last updated my blog. Having now spent three and a half months out in India, working as an IDEX fellow, I now realise that thinking I could write a weekly work update on top of the million and one other things I have going on was somewhat unrealistic. That said, things are finally starting to settle out here and I feel it is most certainly time to let you all know what on earth I’ve been up to. Better late than never right?

Front of the school

To recap from way back when, my central job as an IDEX fellow involves working for a low-fee taking school as a strategy and business consultant.  At my school, Alliance International, I am trying to organise and develop all those aspects which make for the successful running of any educational establishment: academics, finances, management policy, discipline strategies and even infrastructure analysis.  One might think that for someone with a background in moral philosophy (as opposed to education, business or management) who has undergone a mere two weeks of training this is a rather daunting task, and truthfully it is. But to help support this consultancy role, all IDEX fellows have access to a huge network of service providers and experts in different fields relating to education to whom we can reach out for help and training.  In addition to this, amongst the group of fellows itself, we have a vast array of different skill sets and backgrounds and have formed working groups based on our particular abilities and the key focus for policy in our schools. The idea is that sharing knowledge and skill sets will make for the best outcomes.

Myself with Pre-primary on "Star Day"

Currently at Alliance International I have a number of different projects on the go.  August was spent creating a detailed case study report of the school to find out which areas were particularly strong or weak. September was then spent constructing a business plan with a timeline for specific projects.  Now that we are well into October, those projects are slowly coming into existence. My key area focuses are spoken English, careers guidance for older children, teacher training (particularly with regards to discipline strategies), inculcation of moral behavior, a special needs awareness program and application for building grants and student scholarships.

Working in India is both hugely rewarding and ridiculously frustrating and can be an emotional experience.  The last few months have been especially tough with the addition of finishing a master’s dissertation thesis on top of all other work (hence minimal blogging).  Things can be hard when I spend an afternoon explaining to my school owner that my job does not involve teaching and then being told the next morning that I’ve got five classes to take that day. Or when I try to go to school but local political activists, the Telangana, hold strikes for a month and close down the bus services so I can’t get there. But when I see twenty 9^th standard students happily chatting to locals about the dangers of using plastic bags, or when I drag my school owner (who regularly beats children) to a culture of peace training session and he ends the day by saying “I thought this would be a waste of time but I realise now how important peaceful disclipline really in in school” the job is definitely made worthwhile. This fellowship is all about taking small steps in the right direction whilst looking at ways that every project implemented in each school can be replicated in others and sustainably maintained.

School banner highlighting some of the
unique features of Alliance. Including the new
teacher from London...

The next few blog entries will outline some of the programs I am currently working on as well as the challenges I’ve faced and the mad ups and downs of living and working in India.

Applications are now open for the 2012-13 cohort. Anyone interested and wanting to find out more, feel free to contact me via email, facebook or on here. www.idexfellows.com

A day in the life of an IDEX fellow

I’ve made it through my first week of working in the schools and have been blown away by how many new things have already been thrown in my direction.  It’s been good fun meeting teachers and kids in school (who all treat me like I’m a world famous celebrity) and I’ve really enjoyed learning how to apply the things we were taught during training to the real world. Although every day here is different, I have tried to give an overview of what I do in this blog post by writing a day in the life of an IDEX fellow. I’m sure if the other fellows read this they will give account of totally different experiences to mine, but hopefully they’ll be far too busy with their own work to check it out…

My housemates all setting off on their
daily individual commutes 

6.45am: It’s wake up time for me. I have a cold shower, get dressed in my kurta and dupatta and sit at my computer with a coffee for about 45mins going through my action plan for the day ahead. At this time I might also do bits and bobs of research on local social enterprises and send the odd email to our program managers or someone from an organisation we are working with. I leave the house via a quick outdoor breakfast stop the local idly stand on my. Four idly (a delicious steamed pattie made from fermented lentils and rice), coconut chutney, sambar (a thin and spicy vegetable curry) and a chai totals at 16 rupees (22p). Bargain! I have to take two buses to school on my hour -ong commute, the second of which takes me to Golconda Fort, one of Hyderabad’s most famous historical sites. Every day as I walk to my school from the bus station some helpful (and confused) local tries to redirect me the Fort, assuming I am a tourist. There aren’t many other reasons a non-Indian would be going to this area.

Kids in 4th standard

9am: I arrive in school and have meeting with school owner Mr Syed Arif. We discuss the things I am hoping to get done that day and he tells me all the new ideas he has had. Mr Arif was born locally and is part of a family very well known in the Golconda area, the predominantly Muslim old city of Hyderabad.  Like many of the owners of Affordable Private Schools, he started out as a teacher in another private school and made a bit of extra money (and developed a very good reputation) by doing after school private English tuition.  He was able to go to the USA on a teaching program in Atlanta for a few years to work as a teacher in an American school and came back to India and started his own school, Alliance International, with the help of government loans and family money. Alliance has only been open for 14 months, but already boasts 1,200 children – a high number for affordable private schools. The kids pay up to 5,000 rupees per year (about £75) and range in age from preschool (age 5) to 10^th standard (age 16).  It is very impressive that so many parents have chosen to send their children to the school when it has been running for so little time and when there are so many other schools in the area, but Mr Arif’s reputation as forward thinking as well as his international travel experience has gained him much respect and parental trust. He is hugely keen to maintain this reputation and provide a high quality service as the threat of parents pulling their children out of school is one that is constantly on the cards.

Myself and Vice Principle Miss Tahera in the school's the brand new library

10am: I start out my work in school for the day. Every day is different and the range of things I do varies greatly. I am currently supposed to be putting together a case study of the school so I often sit in on classes and observe the teaching and look through the children’s workbooks. Sometimes I sit in the office and go through finance or attendance records. Often I move around the school, which has three blocks (senior, junior and preschool), chatting to the headmistresses of each block and finding out what they are concerned (or happy) about. I also do some building assessments and look at classroom facilities and how they are being utilised. My school owner has recently opened a new library for the kids which is great, but I’ve yet to see any children in it. These are the sorts of things I have to note down. Sometimes I get roped into a bit of teaching by students or teachers who still assume that because I’m English I must be here to teach. But I try to keep this to a minimum. In addition to observation I am also trying to initiate some small projects in school time such as teacher training, guidance counsellor sessions with disruptive kids and helping teachers find new online resources for interactive teaching before launching into a full business strategy plan in September.

1pm: School is finished for the day. Normally it runs until 4.30pm with taught classes until 2pm and compulsory study time after that, but this month it is Ramadan and, since the school is uniformly Muslim and fasting is compulsory for every student over the age of ten, everyone is let out early to go home and rest and pray. I remain behind with some of the teachers for half an hour to teach them one or two games from our new program EIG – English Improvement Games. EIG was set up by myself and Miss Tahera as a daily way to make children more excited about learning English. We compiled a list of games (researched from the internet) which all involve some kind of English teaching. We teach one game to the teachers each day, then the next day they play them once or twice with their own classes. It’s very simple and free, but effective.

The teachers getting into some ball games during EIG

2pm: I take my buses back from the Golconda suburbs to the central part of town where I live. I often head to a smart local coffee shop which is quiet and air conditioned and equipped with wifi and terrific mango shakes. I find that even a morning at the school completely drains my energy – there is absolutely no alone time as everyone constantly wants to chat – so Ruci&Idoni is a pretty good place to have some downtime and reflect back on what I’ve learnt that day. I type up my notes for the case study of the school I am compiling, send some emails, and do some prep for the following days.  Today, I have been emailing the project manager of MILLEE, an organisation which helps train children in English through the use of a very specific mobile phone program, to tell her about how the program went. There will be much more info on MILLEE coming soon on this blog (watch this space).

5pm: I head back to my flat in Banjara Hills via the xerox shop for any photocopying I need to do for the next day such as handouts for school or notes for the school owner. Often at this time in the early evening the IDEX fellows have to either meet with Allie, our program leader at IDEX, to let her know how our progress is going, or with the working group we have been assigned. The working groups are small sets of IDEX fellows who meet to work on specific areas of the IDEX program itself. I am on the social business committee so our job is to organise trips for the fellows to visit other social enterprises in the local area. We are currently doing research on different kinds of organisations including microfinance groups and arts and cultural community programs.

8pm: The rest of the evening is mine to use, for any additional work to do, skype calls back home and dinner. Sometimes there are drinks parties at the houses of other people in the Hyderabad social enterprise field which is a great opportunity to find out about social development work done beyond the educational sphere. Generally I’ll just pick up some parantha bread and dhal and wind down with my flatmates at home recharging my energy for another day…

Myself and one other fellow getting into the social enterprise mentality at one of our early brainstorming sessions!