Juhi Chadha, Sriya Srikrishnan and Zohar Fuller, students from Brandeis University in Boston wanted to spend a few weeks in Mumbai better understanding and contributing to the cause of communal harmony.  They joined with Parivartan School (a partner of AID-Mumbai) and Experimental Theatre Foundation.  Juhi's notes from her first week in the field - er, in the street - promise exciting days ahead. 

Here are snippets from her entries at Voice of the Parivartan Children

Juhi Chadha

An Emotional Rollercoaster
June 18th, 2009-Thurs
It wasn’t until today that we realized what we got ourselves into.
...
Although Zohar and I had planned the day like we do everyday, the energy levels were too high for us to follow through with our plan. ...
The children taught us how to play ‘Kabadi’- a game that requires 2 teams. Zohar was in one and I was in the other. Other than this being a team building activity and creating a higher level of infirmity, it was really nice as the children got more vocal and took charge. We observed the leaders amongst the kids and eyed them for the rest of the day.
As expected and planned, Manjul took the children out on the street so that they could get a feeling of what it was like to be confident and noticed on the street. ...It was there that they started to sing their song “Hum Bache..kehna chahe apni baat..suno suno..suno suno”..(We Children..want to speak our thoughts..LISTEN LISTEN..) Just the first to words have extreme power in them- empowering themselves as children. After a few rounds of singing this song, about 20-30 people/ passers by gathered around to watch the commotion. They stood and watched expectedly. It was an amazing preview to what would be a week from now...
Having had no theatre experience and having had seen a very limited number of plays in my life didn’t really help. ...
We decided to start playing the ‘acting out a scene from the streets of the slums’ game. I picked up on the mini-leaders and asked them to build different objects. One became a house, the other a water pump, a boy taking a bath at the water pump while the other filling water at the same pump. We also had a goat and a random kid going to school. At first, it all felt chaotic and I felt like I lost control- when Manjul jumped in subtly helped out. Then, we redid another scene that was followed through with much more control. I was proud of our little street scene- I think we did a good job :D
We closed the day as we usually do- with some sort of reflection and then meditation. Seeing the confidence of these children rise was amazing.
Reaching a new level of comfort
June 17th, 2009- Wed
Today was a new level of comfort and familiarity. As soon as we walked into class, all the children screamed “Welcome Teacher” as they always do- puts a smile on my face as soon as we enter.
As usual, we had planned the day, with today’s focus being the team building activities and moving towards the specifics of theatre. We had taken a bunch of notes and suggestions from Manjul the evening before. We tried to implement these ideas into games of our own. I tried to get them into a ‘musical clapping session’ which didn’t really turn out to be as planned. So we switched over to another game suggested by Sriya which reminded me of Brandeis orientation week. ? The name of the game was ‘WAH’ which works on building quick thinking and reflexives. It also works on them building confidence and becoming loud in a theatrical sense versus screaming.
...
One girl asked me to teach her how to write and read. She was one of the girls who didn’t come to school regularly.
A lot of these students haven’t been stopped from coming to school from their parents. The community has always been very inviting of us.
However, there are many underlying problems that I haven’t yet completely grasped.
* Like although the parents don’t explicitly say that the children can’t go to school- many of the children come late (sometimes 2/3 hours late) to class because they had to cook food, clean dishes or fill water. A lot of the times its invariably the girls that have to do these things- hence they miss out.
* The students are from migrant worker families- since they’re always moving they don’t get a chance for continuous formal education.
* Girls have to get married early.
* The priority isn’t formal education. There are many boys that have been sent to work instead of studying.
What’s hard is that the people themselves don’t really think of these things as problems.
...
June 15th, 2009- Day 6 (Mon)
Today was a challenge for sure. We decided to work with the ‘older’ children who study in the second half of the day i.e. 1-5pm. Since Parivartan has 2 centers, we decided to check out both to get a feel for both set of children so we spent 2 hours at each center. We went there without a plan, without any expectations. Today was supposed to be a day of observance.
Ofcourse, that’s not how it turned out to be. Once we reached the classroom, Gangadhar met us and introduced us to the new teacher (who’s been working for Parivartan since approx 3 years, but we hadn’t met before). She was inviting but I sensed an unsure atmosphere in the classroom- from the students, the teacher as well as Gangadhar.  So once we introduced ourselves to the teacher, we explained our purpose and project.
There were some students in class who landed up an hour before class started and helped the teacher clean the room. However some turn up many of the children don’t turn up to school regardless of reminders sent to home. The teacher decided to take a leave and call those children to school while we played with the kids. Since we didn’t really have a plan or discussion, we the four of us stood in front of the kids, introduced ourselves while they stared at us with wide and expecting eyes. This bothered me since I felt a lack of confidence and direction in what I was doing. The four of us looked at each other for what felt like a really long and quite 30 seconds. Finally, to bring up the energy in the room and some informality, we got the students to stand in a circle in order to see each other. We played a game which required them to say their names and do an action. We started with Zohar and worked towards the rest of the team so that the kids got an idea of what to do and were comfortable with making noise. It started off well until we came across two girls who refused to say a word. I realized they hadn’t repeated anyone’s names the entire game. We didn’t force them so we went to the next people.
Like any given classroom there was atleast one kid who talked the most, one mischievous and some that were to shy to say anything. What surprised me here is that everyone was extremely respectful and followed instruction without much of a push. There seemed to be a tendency of the ‘herd mentality’. In one of our games, where we named an animal and made that animal’s sound, if one started with a cat, there where atleast 4 that followed with the same animal. One kid would change the animal, say to a dog, and then another 5 kids followed suit. When the teacher finally came back from ‘looking for children’ she asked the students to write their names on the board to see how much of their studies they remembered from before vacation. You could see a direct correlation between the students who were the most confident with how much they knew and between the most quite and the new.  Combining the two, explained why those 2 girls didn’t say a word.
In the second center, we walked in again with the intention to just observe. But ofcourse, that didn’t work as the children seemed too curious. This time, however, the teacher was familiar and she stayed with us the entire time. We did the same thing with the circle and realized the students were much more vocal.  The teacher asked them to sing songs they remembered. After some encouragement, the students started singing, sometimes alone or sometimes in twos. After a few more games we tried to play dumb-charades. Once again, we felt like the energy level got low so I asked the kids which was their favorite game and to teach us instead. That worked great as we passed a whole half an hour playing that.
Overall, the day was challenging in many respects. I still don’t feel a complete connection with the children, but it was only the first day so I have hope. I have many concerns like if the kids have high expectations and we let them down, and if we get too boring and they decide not to come to school. It’s hard to always entertain at the same time keep focus. Maybe I’m thinking too much, but it’s always sensitive working with kids and I don’t have much experience here that makes it a bigger challenge.
We spent 2 hours reflecting our day with Manjul later in the evening. That definitely helped me clear my thoughts and leveled some of my concerns. His calmness and confidence transferred over to me as it did before. What I like about him is that he’s perceptive and works through the team members as required and in a strategic way. Not that my concerns have disappeared, but I know we’re being guided. And that helps.
June 13 & June 14, 2009- Day 4 & 5 (Sat & Sun)
...[Manjul] gave us a quick synopsis of what ETF has done, what it represents and what our focus would be as a team. ...He works with a level of energy and confidence that’s so easily transferable.
I have built a whole new level of faith in what we're doing today. I'm not going to lie; I had 1000 concerns and didn't really have complete confidence in our result. Today, that changed.
...The phrase of “learning through experience and exposure” stuck with me.
Its absolutely incredible how perspectives change when you’re organizing something and when you’re actually working at the ground level.
...
Yesterday had a 2 hour meeting with AID Mumbai and Parivartan... They said that funding was such a huge issue that even starting the school for the year is going to be a challenge! Parivartan had 3 centers last year but this year they only have 2 because of the limited funds.
Also, we finally met Shakil who is the founder of Parivartan. ...Although his main focus has been education, his wife and he have been spending years trying to tackle the peripheral issues like hygiene and water shortage problems.
June 12, 2009- Day 3
... We met Shabana who’s Shakil’s wife. She’s a very impressive woman, whose family is from middle class South India. For the entire hour, I was engrossed in hearing the stories from an organizer’s perspective.  She told stories of how Parivartan got started, how the smallest and the most obvious issues become the hardest to deal with in this particular community and how the current problems are just those extended from what they’ve been fighting for years!
Mumbai has been going through a transformational stage through the Slums Rehabilitation Scheme (SRS). However, every slum in Mumbai has a different experience. Sangam Nagar (this slum we’re working at) has been neglected for years from the Government.
...
After years of fighting, Shakil and Shabana , finally got the BMC to start the first and only municipal school in the area.
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Shabana says that at this point the biggest problem is working with the Government in a diplomatic way. They have been fighting for years for the smallest things like an actual community bathroom.
The rest of the day, we did some more surveys.  Sriya came across a family with 9 children in a little cubby of a house while I came across a 23  year old man who’d graduated with a Bachelor’s degree. The children recognized us from the day before and followed us again. It felt really nice to see the familiar faces.
June 11, 2009- Day 2-
The experience today was incredible. A large part of that experience had to do with the fact that I felt much more comfortable in the community we were working with.
We continued to do what we started yesterday which is surveying the different families in a given community to get an idea of the number of children who are not currently enrolled in school and the reason for that.
...
The administrator, Gangadhar, who had been born and brought up in the Dharavir slum, speaks good English and seems like an extremely helpful, diligent and selfless person. He works in a little cubby within the slum, which we have to squish through. It’s hard to imagine this is where he was sitting when we were in touch with him from Boston while putting the program in place.
...
[The teacher,] Gayatri Maam (as we call her) is a very simple women who instills the confidence in us to work freely with the community at the same time is sensitive to where we come from.
...The simplicity of the kids still amuses me. Regardless of the fact that the average number of children in a given ‘house’ is 4, the kids find a way to keep themselves amused and happy. And although majority of the mothers were in their late 20s- 30s, they looked much older and worn out with very limited energy.
...
A lot of these parents haven’t been against education. They were more than willing to talk and explore the opportunity. But they were worried that they’re students would be rejected from Parivartan just like they were from many other schools that they looked into. The reasons for rejection varied from the fact that they were from a specific place, were of a specific age or because they migrated too much.
I’m really excited to understand this community more. They seem to be really willing to learn and many of the kids are very bright. Infact some of the women were teasing the fact that there’s only education for children and not for older women....There’s more to see and observe.
June 10, 2009- Day 1-
How do I feel? Numb.
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All our lives we’ve been told that these are the ‘not safe’ areas. The streamline thing to do is to help through organizations where the facilities are much more acceptable for students like us. But this is different. It doesn’t get any more grass root than this.  Do I like this? No. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps, it’s something to do with the fact that it’s my first step into this neighborhood that I’ve been avoiding all my life.
....
I need time and patience.

Read more of Juhi's journals posted at Voice of the Parivartan Children.  Would you like to volunteer in India? Apply for Internship