Day Two of Immersion and Learning...

We aimed to start early and had announced this to all participants the previous evening. However, when we arrived, the field was empty. But we experienced yet again word of mouth communication in action as participants soon started to arrive in ones, twos, threes and groups.

 

All teams felt the need for a rapid 'think on your feet' preparation beyond the curriculum, for plans and activities we had carefully created. Koel and Kulwant scrambled to improvise in preparation for the arrival of their energetic and large gang. Shweta and Siddharth improvised too in a less intense manner. Mohit and Sharmila strategised on how to address several of the women's queries from the day before while Amit only worried whether his team would choose them over wheat cutting and show up...but the team prepared in great earnest all the same...

The children's group today first made a paper star and learned how to join all their stars together to make a group crown as you see here. And the wearer was pleased as punch parading in it. 

The older ones in their group then worked with matchsticks and rubber tube, first making 2D structures and then transitioning into 3D structures, in which they used a lot of their imagination. The younger ones were given clay to make objects first with some suggestions, and then using their imagination. They dried their clay objects and had a whale of a time painting these with water colors. We were so impressed with the fine handiwork of one little talented child as he displayed not just finesse but also a wonderful color sense.

The youth group spent a large part of the day doing an empathy exercise, where they interviewed a partner to know them better and then proceeded to design and make a gift for her or him. They enjoyed this a lot and painstakingly made the gifts.

        

While we had plans for a final exercise for them to select an object from their surroundings and redesign it, we found a general reluctance and discomfort with more thinking and much greater enthusiasm for making. So they continued with material exploration and made more artifacts during the second half of the day as well and happily took all their handiwork home.

In the women's group some women who we identified as capable as well as interested then took up a larger mat with a design to embroider.

Most wished to take it home and we permitted them to do so. They arrived at different times with part of the work completed and returned the sample back to us. We identified also a talented mother-daughter team as the leaders who took up more sample designs and the remaining raw materials we had, to hold, manage, monitor quality and distribute after today, to women who had successfully completed their pieces.

We introduced our final problem today to our men's group, to come up with the design of a privacy cover for women who need to go in the fields everyday, in the absence of a toilet. They all agreed that this was a significant problem for their womenfolk. Everyone initially began thinking of brick structures incorporating a pit and ventilation, that must be away from the main house etc.. We then engaged them in how it would be made, its cost, affordability and such factors, with the idea of having them come up with a frugal rather than an infrastructural solution. We introduced some constraints again, like enabling women to go out in the mornings without people looking at them etc.. They then came up with a lot of interesting solutions for toilet privacy for women. 

Again there was enthusiastic participation and much discussion that we enjoyed a lot. Most were one or another version of a portable tent, but had local inspiration behind it, like a mosquito net. One of the tent-like solutions used cloth and bamboo, that could be opened out to install and folded up to carry back home, made as a scaled down model, for which Pulkit donated his bed sheet! Another was similar in concept but used jute. And yet another group interestingly came up with an idea of taking forward the umbrella concept, using an umbrella frame with an additional cloth cover that could alternately be lifted up or pulled down to provide the privacy cover when needed and folded like an umbrella when done - an umbrella with walls to hide. It was really a very interesting solution to have an umbrella that can solve the purpose of being an umbrella as well as provide privacy cover when needed. Each of the groups worked very hard to complete their respective prototypes. 

We had a quick exhibition at the end of day, attended by 2 faculty members from IITK and many people from the villages. We handed out certificates to all participants and then set off again, back on our journey to Kanpur. 

     

   

1st May 2015