Sunday, February 21, 2010

A quick update

I dream of blogging again one day. In the meantime, here is a link to the blog I posted on the AIF blog in December.

More recently, however, the English team and I've been doing a lot of traveling. I've visited almost all all the districts where the Ready to Read program is being run this year. During those visits I visit schools and observe classes, interact with students and teachers and we try to screen the DVD at least once a visit. We are getting great feedback and seeing how the program is both working and how we need to adjust our teacher training to make it a stronger program in the future.

I've been on the road a lot these days--overnight trains, buses, share autos, autos, walking through rice paddies, and riding on the back of motorbikes--seeing a lot of rural Tamil Nadu. It's humbling and inspiring. It makes me appreciate coming back to my sanctuary in Chennai, and yet makes me dream of spending quiet weeks in a village learning to milk cows and sleeping under the stars.

I feel very lucky to be where I am doing what I'm doing, but my time (and funding) here is coming to an end. I need to make a plan. What's next? I'm usually great at planning. I love planning. But for some reason, I feel overwhelmed at the options, and overwhelmed at all there is still to do. Have I made even a dent? Can I ever? And will that ever be enough? Or has this just served my selfish desire to try and do some good in the world?


I posed with a class of 5th graders and their teacher in Dharmapuri district.

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