Summer 2011 - Day Five

We arrived early to prepare for Friday assembly at 8am. All children in the school were assembled, as is their custom, for prayer and a message from the principal. They stand in absolutely straight lines in order of age and the lines are maintained by the prefects very effectively (we could learn something from this system!)

After the principal’s message to the children he introduced us. He told the school about how we raised the money this year (biking and running) and how we had spent it. We then addressed the students – using the English teacher to translate for us – commenting on how we had noticed the school was so much more attractive with new plants and palm trees and a new playground and the lovely murals the teachers and students had painted after we left last year. We then explained about the scholarships and how the students were selected.

The academic scholarship was awarded to Showmiya in year 10 for her continued high level of academic performance. She will receive 500 rupees (£3 or $5) a month to pay for her tuition for the year starting in January 2012. We would also have liked to pay for her transport to her extra lessons for a year - which would amount to 1000 rupees a month (£6 or $10). She will take her GCE ‘O’ levels in December 2012.

The athletic scholarship was awarded to A. Al Fayad in year 9 for his excellence at the 100m, 200m and long jump. He will receive a pair of running spikes and running clothes. We will have to travel to Kandy (about 300kms) to purchase these items. We have taken a drawing of Fayad’s foot to try and help us buy the correct size of spikes as, depending on who you listen to, his foot size varied from 32 – 39!!

We were then each presented with a certificate by the principal. It was very moving as heart felt thanks were expressed and the wording on the certificate reads:
‘Thank you for always being there when we need you’. The certificate is beautifully laid out with our names on each one.

Later in our final staff meeting the English teacher thanked us for spending time with all the teachers and for trying to understand all aspects of the school. He commented that we had looked at literally everything in the school and asked a lot of questions!! The speech felt more intimate than before and very warm and sincere.

We feel we have had a very productive week. We think that the large amount of time we have spent this time talking to many teachers and the principal have built relationships and understanding on both sides. The set of criteria we set up at the beginning of the week to determine the priority of teacher requests and the message of ‘sustainability’ is starting to bear fruit.

We will be back next year to continue our work and to hopefully build a greenhouse for the school.

Summer 2011 - Day Four

Today is Poya (full moon) and so no school as it is a Buddhist holiday. This allowed us to dismantle and rebuild the roof on the middle school building – sadly in need of repair as it has big holes in it.

We had all the supplies and building materials on site the night before and when we arrived early this morning work had already started at 7.15am. The previous covering on the roof had all been removed and the carpenter was already atop the roof installing extra wooden support batons for the corrugated tin that is to be the new roof. The carpenter was not looking too happy when we arrived as the previous roof has been constructed with a motley assortment of wooden batons (including some tree branches) and it was making it very difficult for him to provide a level surface on which to mount the corrugated tin. Much discussion took place between ourselves, the Principal and the carpenter – an interesting exercise as the carpenter is deaf and mute! Luckily the carpenter is a resourceful fellow and by placing supports under various existing pieces of wood to raise them he was able to level the surfaces. Good humour was restored and the work continued all day and right into the evening. The result is a lovely new roof and one that is – mostly – waterproof. Unfortunately the number of sheets of corrugated tin that we needed was misjudged and we came up short. Some old pieces were used instead. These pieces do, however, have one drawback – they have some holes in them rather defeating the purpose! However, the carpenter will come back to repair these holes when he comes to paint the roof so hopefully that will all work out well.

Our business cards are now complete as are the scholarship certificates which we will present at the assembly tomorrow.

We also talked to Mr Principal about the preschool. He really is interested to find a teacher for the 3 – 5 year olds now as he realizes how important these preschool years are. We discussed the possibility of this teacher being Thasleem and he had already had the same thought. He said he would call a meeting of parents next week and propose that they contribute towards the salary of a proper teacher. The charge would be in the region of 500 rupees, per child, per month (about £3 or $5). We told him that we would be prepared to pay for the training of a teacher provided that there was a commitment of at least 20 parents to fund a salary for the teacher. If there are more than 20 children in the class then there will need to be an assistant teacher too. If more than 40 children then 2 teachers will be required.

To ensure that this is a sustainable project we would ask Thasleem to sign a contract to remain with the school for at least 2 years. If he leaves after he would be required to train another teacher to take his place.

Summer 2011 - Day three

Today started early as we intended to see the morning exercise routine taking place. We were accompanied by six teachers we had met the night before. This group was headed by a Sri Lankan teacher who runs a charity called 'Handsaid' and works at the international school in Basel,Switzerland and who came to Sri Lanka after the tsunami to build low cost housing in the north east. She has since continued with her work here building preschools. She was interested to see Al Ishraq as a potential site for a pre school - something that would please Mr Principal greatly! 'Handsaid' would be interested to build pre school as long as the preschool would employ a qualified preschool teacher. This generated much discussion between Mr Principal and the teachers as to whether this would be possible as currently their 'pre-school' is run on a volunteer basis by a lovely mom who is not a qualified teacher and is not receiving a salary. Al Ishraq has limited time to make a decision though as 'Handsaid' will only pursue this project if they are entirely sure it is sustainable and properly funded.

After the exercise routine we met with Mr Principal who had an immediate request for us - to repair the roof of the temporary classroom which is leaking badly. This of course means that those classrooms are difficult to use during the 4 month long monsoon season. We immediately asked him to get a quote to see if this would be feasible. Very promptly we had one and as this fell within our 70,000 rupee budget we decided to pursue it as it did meet 1, 2 and 3 of our criteria.

We then observed another sports event. Grade 1,2 and 3 did some races in the Assembly Hall - which is now a very dangerous place to be with tiles literally falling off the roof. Luckily none fell during the event and the children enjoyed several races while being watched by their contemporaries.

After lunch we had a meeting with Mr Principal to finalise how to spend the rest of the budget and to identify the two students who would be the recipients of our scholarships. Mr Principal and his teachers chose a girl for the academic scholarship as she is an outstanding student. They expect she might have the highest marks in her GCE 'O" levels next year and qualify to go on to study for her 'A' levels. She is currently in Grade 10. They suggested that we offer a year's after-school tuition to meet her potential. We were thrilled that they selected a girl for academic achievement in this highly male-dominated culture. They nominated a boy for the sports scholarship, a young man they had previously mentioned to us. He is a talented athlete competing in the 100M, 200M and long jump events. He competed at the divisional level but failed to make the provincial races due to lack of coaching and equipment, such as spikes to run in (he currently runs bare foot). He will receive a pair of spike athletic shoes and a set of running clothes as his scholarship.

Alex and Aerian then went to Pottuvil to price building supplies for a new roof with Ameer Master's assistance. In short order we had acquired the supplies and only needed a carpenter to agree to do the work the following day. Tomorrow is Poya Day (Full Moon) and a school holiday, so an excellent opportunity to get the work done whilst we are still here and while the children are not at school. The carpenter was engaged during the afternoon and work will begin tomorrow morning at 8am.

Finally, we concluded our busy day with Thasleem to finalise the design of our business cards and the making of our scholarship certificates.

We look forward to another busy day tomorrow 'supervising' the demolition and reconstruction of a new roof for the middle school classrooms.

Summer 2011 - Day two

We started our day walking around the school to observe teachers in action. It seems that there is a lot more teaching going on! Firstly, 24 of the 28 teachers were present (as was the case yesterday). Teachers were teaching and students were engaged. In a couple of classes where students were on break, we spoke to the older students to find about their future post-school plans. Just like with our students they dream about becoming doctors, lawyers, engineers, information technicians, or teachers. None of them want to become what is ultimately more likely: farmers, business owners or tourist industry workers. We presented this information to the staff meeting which was met with wide opened eyes and silence. We have no idea what that means.

Then, the promised cricket match began! Wow can those kids play! And wow how those kids are so happy WHEN they play! We suggested that perhaps they consider a weekly match and inter school games.

When the games were over, we did some 'needs' analysis regarding furniture. Furniture requests represented a large portion of the requests for the left over budget. We met with the entire staff again to introduce our set of criteria to help prioritise the list of their requests. These were that the requests must be one of more of the following:

1. Educational and help students advance towers success
2. Must be important need for the school and students
3. Can not be funded by the government
4. Money making project that can fund other needs

We rated each request according to this set of criteria to show teachers where the chips fall, so to speak. The teachers and the principal seemed very interested by the idea. At the end of the meeting, one teacher came to us and proposed that they start a student newspaper. In listening to him, it was clear that he most definitely had thought about the 4 criteria as in fact that idea meets them all. This same teacher requested a comfy chair and newspapers for the staff room yesterday. So, it seems that this meeting put a whole new perspective on how to spend money.

In the evening, we met with Principal and a translator to take a closer look at the last 5 years and review how the projects we funded fit or didn't fit the 4 criteria, in order to reduce future waste of funds. Principal spoke very candidly about each past project and answered old questions we had been puzzled by. Looking forward, Principal says he has ideas for ways to spend the left over budget. We are eager to see how they match up with the criteria set. We also asked him to consider two possible candidates for a scholarship - one academic and one athletic.

Summer 2011 - Day one

The school seems to be more and more beautiful! We found the wall immediately on the right as you enter the school all painted with the remaining paint that we bought last time. They even selected a section of wall and made a picture of the Araliya flower for us with 'Araliya Ed Foundation' emblazoned down the side. We also happily found that many of their previous requests were granted either by the government or NGOs. Since last summer, they received:

1. a playground from UNESCO
2. some equipment to start a science lab which they have yet to set up but will as soon as they receive everything and hook up to a water supply.
3. greenery around the grounds
4. more computers (with tables and computer chairs) for their IT room, although this room is still not being used

They made some of their own changes as well:
1. Principal's office was moved to what used to be the English Unit.
2. They created a classroom out of the World Food Programme room

The theme of this trip is to explain the concept of sustainability and applying it to past and future projects

We started our time there with a small powerpoint presentation to the teachers of what we did to raise money this year: Aerian's 120 kilometer bike race in South Africa and Alex's Cham's Got Talent and half marathon. They were quite impressed. They had not imagined that that is how we raise money. We showed them that we raised 150,000 rupees in total and that 80,000 rupees was spent on boy scout uniforms at the Principal's request. Then we asked teachers to make a list of items or projects they would like Araliya to pay for with the remaining 70,000 rupees left over. The result was very interesting! We are now going to prioritize the requests according to a selection criteria based on Araliya's and Al Ishraq's Vision and Mission Statements that we will show the teachers.

For this trip, we explained the concept of sustainability in our support of Al Ishraq. One step besides looking at the school's needs in a more structured manner, was to announce that we would not be teaching or organizing Sports Day. This year, we feel the school is fully equipped to organize Sports Day as they have the kit as well as ideas from previous years. We also feel that they have learned all they can from our teaching and modeling. It's time for them to show US now :) This announcement was met with disbelief and a few giggles. And every time they asked us about the details of Sports Day, we said that we didn't know anything about it and to speak to the person in charge (whom they selected). Before we left, they promised us a cricket match tomorrow. OK we said, with big smiles :)