A report from guest volunteer Ms. Coline Humbert from France who volunteered with us for a week in August 2008 at Setrawa village project:

Sambhali project: First and final impression

I got to know about Sambhali project while I was traveling in Rajasthan with a friend. When we arrived in Jodhpur, we decided to stay at Durag Niwas Guest House because it was well known as being a nice place runned by a welcoming family who does everything to make the tourists feeling comfortable and even part of their own family. Anyways, that was true but it is not the topic of my “essay”!!

While we were staying at the guest house, I noticed the sign indicating that a project aimed at empowering women were runned within the guest house. I have always been interested by that kind of initiative for several reasons. Since a long time, I feel concerned about the fact that every person on earth doesn’t have the same rights. As a young girl, I just had the feeling that it was not fair. That was just a child’s feeling but I think that was one of the main reasons why I chose to study law at the university. I had in my mind the idea of starting maybe one, maybe several projects to help those who are in the need. Then, I concentrated my formation on human rights law and found out that was what I really wanted to do with my life: Helping people who are victims of human rights violations to get their lives being better, in any way possible.

Therefore, when I saw the sign of Sambhali, I asked what this project was dealing with. I got introduced to Govind, the creator of the association, who explained me the aim of Sambhali: helping to empower women of the most defavorated fraction of the Indian society (economically speaking or regarding the caste system) so that they could learn useful tools in order to become independent economically but also more confident, socially and emotionally speaking.

I liked the project. While studying, I got to do some women rights law, and of course, as part of the women community, I felt concerned with the situation of some women in our world.

I knew that the friend with who I was traveling was going back home before me because she had less holidays than me. While in France, I thought about doing some volunteer work when my friend would leave me. I didn’t really know if it was possible to contact an organization and tell them “I’m coming for one week but I can still help you a bit” so I did not do anything but I still had the idea in my mind. When I found Sambhali, it was a great occasion. I liked the project, I had some time to give and a big willingness to help.

I told Govind that I would come back to Jodhpur. That’s why I’m with Sambhali now.

Sambhali has two project and I was “requested” (Govind always say that looooool) to take part of the one concerning Setrawa village. There, Sambhali project has set up a free school, running for one year now. It allows first non school girls (those who cannot afford even governmental schools) to get some education and second, school girls to improve their English level.

The project is kind of new but it already attracted about fifty girls. They have one teacher, Reeka, a twenty-two years old girl from the village. The everyday timetable includes a sewing class from 11am to 1pm that can also be mixed up with OCE (Other Cultural Activities) which can include singing, dancing, playing sports….and an English class from 5pm to 6.30pm.

The girls of the village are really sweet (special big up for Guddi!!). They are always arriving in the morning with a big smile on their face and yelling “hello” “how are you” everywhere. They are so polite too. You are sure that when you say ‘thank you” you will automatically get a big smile and an enthusiast “you’re welcome”.

You can also see a real willingness to learn in the eyes of those little girls. I remember yesterday, I taught some of them how to read the time and after we finished, I saw one hidden behind the door, her finger pointed towards the board, articulating the ‘lesson’ to keep it in mind. I was really grateful for me to see that. At least, you feel useful.

Today, we had our first real English lesson of the week. We had previously separated the girls in two groups, the oldest and the youngest. I worked with the youngest.

It went pretty well as they are all so happy to learn and so kind. I guess it’s a way easier to teach here than in our western schools where kids tend to be horrible. The problem is that, according to their textbooks, they have done a lot in English already but practically, only a few of them were able to make full sentences as “my name is….” And “I’m….years old”. So I asked all of them to stand up one after the other and to say that, then to write it down. And, as I was working with Rekha, I separated the group in two: those who were not able to write really (only 3: a non school girl and two very young one) and I taught the other how to write numbers in full letters. Again, according to their textbooks, they all know that but in reality, some of them still have a lot of difficulties to remember everything. And that is a generality we observed with every English grammatical point with Helen, the other volunteer. So, we thought that it would be a good idea of we could buy one textbook for each student that they could take home so that we could give them homework. Moreover, it could tie them to the school so that they don’t forget everything about it as soon as they reach home. So tomorrow, we’ll go to see how much it could cost.

On the long-run, I think that this year, the girls will improve their English a lot, especially thanks to the fact that Helen is staying eight months. Indeed, it will be good for them to have the same teacher for a long time so that Helen can get to know each of them well and really work on a long time period.