Founder’s Desk: A Note at Year’s End (2010)
By Faith Gonsalves
Today at Khushi Home, after spending 3 hours having a really amusing (and stressful!) but also powerful evening with the children, 3 girls suddenly yelled loudly as I was walking out of the home, “FAITH didi, FAITH did, ruk jao!”
First, I need to go back three hours.
We walked into “Khushi” Home for Girls, run by the Dil Se Campaign, which currently all Music Basti activities focus on supporting. “Khushi” is home to 104 girls, some of whom I met for the first time today in fact. We walked into Khushi armed with guitars, arts supplies, camera and all (pretty much all the contents that had clogged up all breathable space in the car, which my sister refers to, albeit affectionately, as the “cargo carrier”).
Today was a different day though. Have you ever had one of those dreams where you walk into a room and from corner to corner its covered in shiny packages and presents? (Or something like this!) That was what we saw as Anjuli, Pattie and I walked into the first classroom at Khushi. (Of course, this was followed by having to really tear some of the children away from ripping the shiny, beautiful packages right there!). As usual, some volunteers were late, and Debarghya, our new Location Manager at Khushi Home, a student at the nearby Indian School of Business and Finance walked in to save our art project (a big thank you card, which needed to be written in German – I’ll come to this in a moment). He and Chandan (another volunteer with our team) worked to involve the children’s artistic creativity into a second card. Meanwhile we awaited Neeraj’s arrival (whom the children all vowed they would not speak to, threatened to strangle alive, and dramatically disowned – I’ll come to why in a moment again!). Neeraj is a 20 year old, fantastic folk-Kabir artist, young, energetic, talented and committed to the music program with the children for over one year now.
One of the children made a disappointed comment to me earlier in the afternoon (while she stared at my very mediocre artistic skills in awe), “No one ever stays here, everyone comes but then they just leave.” In our program, much like many others, the attrition rate is high and people trickle in and out frequently, but it’s a reality you need to deal with and use to your advantage. Neeraj hasn’t been able to visit Khushi Home for about 3 months because he is enrolled in an educational program that doesn’t allow him the time. However, it was nearly impossible to explain this to the children, who were angry at him, to say the least.
This brings my back to why Jasmine was yelling “FAITH didi!”, which she followed by pulling me to corner, and shyly finishing the conversation at a far lower decibel, thankfully. She complained that they wanted more music classes, why wasn’t Neeraj coming to teach them, why weren’t there enough guitars for each of the 3 girls (who are learning guitar from another very committed volunteer) to learn on, and it went on. After a while they grinned and forgave Neeraj and called it a truce. But this matter goes so much deeper than this conversation. It’s been a challenge to regularize sessions at the home, organize instruments and teachers. But what was definitely heartening was that Jasmine and her companions came and spoke up for themselves, asked for our accountability, and they asked for answers. To me, this is truly the achievement, not whether Jasmine or Blessy can tell what chord F#13 is.
Yesterday, while sitting in office (yes, office, I never thought we would have one, and we have one because of the willing support of another like minded individual who supports our work and makes his airlines consultancy office a second home to our team), I realized that December has dawned at last, with its cold clasp over all our year’s ambitions and resolutions, where often we realize, “Oh, how time has flown!” This year though, I’m thinking, “How time has flown, but how much I have learned. How differently I perceive the world.” My entire approach to work with children is different, I have a renewed and far deeper understanding of the context, limitations and realities within which the children are placed and how addressing attitudes in order to make change is so important.
This now, brings me to why we had to write “Danke Vielmals” on sheets of craft paper. For the festive season, dear friends at the German Embassy, in particular Mrs Matussek, through a gift collection had collected almost one and half times the number of gifts needed to give each child their own gift for St Nicholas’ Day (6-Dec-2010). It was a wonderful hour of singing and laughter and gift giving, with children exclaiming in excitement over what lay under the bright wrappings. This experience is significant to the above point of how attitudes are the foundation of action. This year in Music Basti our goalshave become clearer than ever before, and our vision is shared and strong and precise. To “motivate children to enjoy learning and develop skills as well as attitudes” cannot be achieved through music alone, without encouraging the children and giving them something to feel motivated about, giving them individual recognition, listening to what they think, and incorporating their thoughts into what is being taught, and how it is taught. Learning can be enjoyable, learning can be inclusive, learning can foster participation, and learning should promote expression, these are the cornerstones of Music Basti’s methodology.
This year is the first time I feel that as a project we have been able to move closer towards the goal of being “child-centric”, where a child-centric ideology is beginning to flow through the philosophy, training, content and methodology of our work with children. A space where we get complaints! Getting complaints from the children (which we only begun to really get October 2010 onwards) really makes me happy – oddly enough. I am ecstatic that the children are confident and unafraid to approach us, and to approach us honestly. They believe that we can be trusted and are able to hold us accountable to this trust.
While today marked another day at Khushi, it helped reinforce the knowledge that programs need to bedynamic and inclusive in their approach to addressing the context of a problem. Music Basti is not merely about music. To me, this year has truly helped me recognize that while Music Basti may have worked with 300-400 children over the past 3 years, this is but a drop in the ocean. But to me this work has been the pinhole to viewing the world and realizing that just a small puncture can allow in so much light! And a small hole can raise so many questions.
There is much I could share about the programmatic aspects of our work, but I think we have ample opportunities to share this information, which is already available online anyway! Our struggle now is to overcome the practical everyday troubles, which pale when looking at some of the intangible positive results that made this note so important to share with you.
We appreciate all your previous support to us, and look forward to your kind support to us in the future.
Themocracy