Day One of Immersion and Learning...

We took awhile to gather the 3 carfuls of people along with all their paraphernalia as we set out for the 2 hour journey to Rasulabad. There were more questions than answers but we all felt well prepared with much to share and give, and much to learn. The student's chatter despite their sleep deprived night reflected the optimistic enthusiasm.

We arrived at Babaji's temple area and were greeted by the village coordinators. We experienced the village way of people based communication as word spread of our arrival and a crowd started gathering full of understandable curiosity, in the initially empty field. We were dismayed at first to see that the 4 spots we had identified with some distance between them were not level ground. 4 large plastic sheets to seat our 4 groups quickly arrived however as we set up shop close to each other for the next 2 days, flexible to keep moving as the sun changed its position, yet clearly defining the 4 separate groups and interests we were addressing and hopefully not encroaching noise levels on each other.

The children's group was a noisy, excited and very large bunch but beautifully managed by Koel and Kulwant as they improvised all along and on the go, as participant ages, numbers, workshop content, exercises and resources all went topsy turvy!
We had planned for 20 but got 40 plus, and many much younger than we had planned. Our workshop leaders did not want to refuse any child hence the setting, and instead they ran parallel activities after dividing the group into an older and a younger one. 

They started with the ever popular paper plane making which the older children loved of course and then progressed to several paper folding activities making boxes, talking crows, balloons and hats. Parachutes from plastic bags, string and stone was a very popular activity. The younger ones did a lot of drawing and coloring, first guided and then on their own and also made the crows and parachutes. Storytelling as transition was fun and insightful for us. The children neither wanted to go for lunch nor wanted Koel and Kulwant to have lunch.

The youth group ended up with a good mix of boys and girls though we were initially given to understand it would be mainly girls because many boys are typically forced to leave the village in search of work. Some girls were torn between joining this versus the women's group doing needlework, which was a somewhat more familiar territory for them. However we encouraged their participation here as we wanted to introduce design thinking and concepts to this impressionable group. Shweta did a wonderful job of introducing the notion of art versus design with visual, printed examples, then elicited examples of the same from their context and then asked them to draw these and discuss with each other. One child remarked after understanding design that 'God is then the best designer' that completely floored our student mentors. 

Interestingly, many even started drawing enhanced designs of these objects, like a walking stick with a stabilizer base so as the elderly coughed, the walking stick would not fall. They then attempted drawing visuals to express words like happy, rain etc. after Siddharth gave a bit of orientation and guidance. We discovered that their color preferences and notions are very different from ours. We next moved them into material exploration using wire, paper, straw, matchsticks. etc. Girls mostly made accessories (ear rings here to match Shweta's dress) while boys made artifacts for the home like pen stands. In the afternoon we lost some participants as they left to harvest wheat. 

The women came in large numbers and enthusiastically took the small colored jute pieces as they worked in cross stitch to make a chessboard pattern. We saw widely varying skill levels as well as numerical abilities. Counting is a key cross stitch skill and some struggled with it even though their sewing abilities were good.

Sharmila and Mohit worked individually with the women and their skill levels became clear to us through their approach, speed and quality on the chessboard pattern. Here's Mohit's rendition of cross stitch principles on the board. Most wanted to take the pieces home as it is hard for them to stay away from home for long periods. Most women of the 23 odd completed their first piece before the end of day and one mother and daughter team even started on a bigger mat. Few who could not, took them home to complete.

The men's group, much to Amit's concerns on whether they would show up or not given that harvesting is on, surprised us by their participation, engagement, enthusiasm, hands on approach and eagerness. One of our learnings through our preparatory visit was realizing how misinterpreted and misrepresented the word 'jugaad' is, and to change the name of the workshop from 'Multi Jugaad' to 'Creative Thinking and Problem Solving'. 

Our team of Amit, Pulkit and Pankaj introduced them to design and local innovation via images, posters, presentations and talks and by showing printed images of everyday jugaad products, explaining that these were designed by people just like them. This excited them a lot. Sitting in a circle with them, showing printed images of local innovations and us drawing on paper as they spoke were all very effective and got them really excited, especially to realize their own potential and using local resources and their own skills. They came up with very interesting solutions to alternative uses for waste products from daily life (Bottle, razor blade, comb, rag cloth, old rubber slippers, tin cooking oil can, plastic packaging, cycle wheel/rim, bora or jute sac, old cardboard boxes). With plastic bottles for example they came up with slippers as well as handles for a cricket bat and a broom. 

Next we held discussions with them on some of their own local innovations, like Sarkanna (2 person agricultural device for raising soil level for sowing), Rat trap (shown in picture), winnowing fan, solar panel, cow dung on wood as fuel, battery charging etc.. We followed this up with ten objects for which we asked them to suggest alternate uses. We found them really interested and involved but unable to express visually so Pulkit kept drawing as they verbalized, as shown below.

We then walked the team to the nearest hand pump, elicited all the problems of using a hand pump and then asked them to create a device that would enable a single person to use the hand pump more efficiently. There were several interesting ideas, a simple one among them, a funnel and pipe combination!

And as last exercise for the day, we introduced them to the problem of creating an alternative device other than umbrella to protect from the sun while working in fields. 

We gave them thermocole as a possible material which 3 groups used quite effectively while one group worked painstakingly and steadily and produced a wonderful design in bamboo and straw (detailed picts are in the photo diary). We later realized that thermocole was perhaps not a good idea as it limited both the form as well as their imagination and limited them from exploring more local materials. They had a tremendous sense of joy and pride after seeing prototypes they had made themselves. 

Today ended with us feeling exhausted, satisfied and challenged. In particular were our discoveries, of how different planning and reality can be, as well the amount of impromptu curriculum adjustment and extemporized delivery that was needed. We knew we learned as much or perhaps more than we taught.

We left the ground for the school where we were to stay the night looking forward to KFC! 

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30th April 2015