Playing A Small Part in my Social Responsibility

My volunteering journey has been quite long and has traveled with me to every school that I have moved to as a child and to every country I have relocated as an adult. Giving back in kind to the community that I reside in, is something I have picked up from my childhood. “Our Village Our Responsibility” (OVOR - #OurVillageOurResponsibility, #OVOR) is an organisation that I have had the pleasure to be associated with after my recent move to India. They are a team, who is passionate about making things better around for all of us, a group of people who share similar views as me.

Their call for volunteer tutors on their Facebook page, to conduct eTeaching for children studying in Government schools in the Virudhunagar district, caught my attention and thus started my association with the founder, Ms. Kavitha K Pandian – an NRI living in the USA. Through their “Classes through Skype” initiative, English and Computer subjects are taught across 28 Government Schools in Virudhunagar, Dindugal, Villupuram and Theni Districts, covering 5200+ students per week involving 150+ volunteer tutors. 

Our Village Our Responsibility was registered as a trust in 2018, though Ms. Kavitha has been working towards this cause individually for around 15 years. The main focus areas for OVOR are: 

• Motivating youngsters to participate & work towards ensuring better governance by elected representatives and public servants.
• Focusing on bringing Govt schools to the forefront by
• Teaching English, National Means-Cum-Merit Scholarship (NMMS) & Computer Science through Skype. This is to bridge the gap between the private schools and government schools, where the government schools are at a disadvantage due to the challenge in the available resources (including personnel and materials). 
• Improvement in Infrastructure: A very critical aspect of providing quality education, especially for the girl children and first-generation learners. In order to make education more appealing and comfortable, infrastructure is a key factor. E.g. toilets, safe and strong school building, comfortable chairs & tables to sit, a library with at least a handful of books for additional reading to improve language and knowledge.

I have been tutoring 25 children in Class VIII from Government High School, Thulukapatty in Virudhunagar District, once a week, for the past 6 months. When an opportunity presented, I also made a personal visit to the school on 18-Nov-19 for face-to-face interaction with the children and staff. 

Having lived in the city all my life, even the Government School building that I have come across, was big in size. This school, which was about 30 minutes’ drive from the town of Virudhunagar, was quite small and no bigger than 4000 sq ft area (maybe even lesser than that). It has a total strength of 156 students (Classes I to X) and 8 teachers who are responsible of teaching these children every subject and prepare them to face the exams of school and life. Having said that, I could not find even one unhappy child in that school. Every direction I turned, I only saw curious happy faces, eager to know who I was (a stranger who was visiting their school). 

I spent almost 2 hours with Class VIII. I had prepared 2 interactive activities to understand how I needed to change my approach to teaching English for them. One was a translation of a small Tamil moral story and the other was to build a passage or a few sentences using 5 random words. They put in their best and earnestly tried to do both these activities for my benefit. In all that 2 hours, I never saw a bored face, a face that was frustrated to sit in class, none of them wanted to walk out of the classroom when the break bell rang. They all were actively participating in the classroom activity, being seated on the floor. That showed me a new perspective of life at a Government school and made me want to do more for the eager to learn spirit. This day turned out to be a humbling and happy experience for me. From the response of the children, I am to understand that they also had fun & benefitted from my visit.

There are people who do chequebook charity and there are those who spare their time and effort for the same cause. Both kinds are needed for any purpose to see the light of day. While I and many like me spare our time for Skype tutoring, there have been many who have contributed in the form of money and materials that made the installation of a computer room with at least a dozen systems, broadband connection to make Skype classes possible and a room to hold these things. This school and many like this one still need basic infrastructure improvement and basic amenities like clean toilets. 

I would urge all those who do not provide for either of the above, to do their share either for OVOR (or through other means), to do something to give back to the community. The contentment and the sense of achievement of being an instrument of change in someone’s life is a big personal morale booster that nothing else in life can give you. 

My earnest request to all parents (esp. with children studying in private schools) and youngsters who want to bring in a social change: Please join hands with such volunteering initiatives and do visit at least one government school, for them to give them an exposure to being socially inclusive and responsible.

Let us do our share to realise the dreams of our leaders who dreamt of a socially inclusive and adaptive society that treats every individual with the same dignity and respect as self!