Street Smart started fifteen days ago with a vague idea of what we would be working on, with the street children at Astley Hall in Dehradun. We started out with painting and art, and it has been going great so far. However, we are losing the connection that we had established with these children when we had started out with the art lessons. Now, we only have the set painting lesson for anything between 1-2 hours, with laughing and talking but the thing is, it is not adding up to the larger picture. Of course, we have managed to gain their trust a little bit and have also managed to get them to listen to us but we need to move forward now. Unless we do that immediately, the kids will start to believe that we have no vision.

I am not disheartened but only firm in my belief that we now need to move forward, strategically and with a firm plan. For one, we need to fix the days that each person volunteers to work because there are days when everybody turns up and then there are days when we have nobody there! Also, we need to fix tasks amongst ourselves so that everybody does not have to juggle all aspects of work and can move ahead with definite responsibilities. All of that needs to be figured out and roster-ed now!

Rajkumar and Sunita are back, though they did not participate in the classes today since they were cooking a meal for themselves! We have been only working with crayons since three days since our painting material was stashed in the boot of Shaila’s car’s but tomorrow onwards we will go back with our paint material. We have now found a new place to put our tables and paint material at, near to Orient Theater where we set up class for now. We were all quite relieved to leave the cribbing old man at Standard’s since he made it clear that he was unhappy with what had been a rare moment of philanthropy when he allowed us to put our table in his shop’s store room!

So that is that for the last two days. We will be meeting with all people involved in Street Smart tentatively on 20th, and then there will be a more concrete steps ahead, including a curriculum that is being developed for our kids exclusively.

PS- Starting tomorrow, I will stop adding the day numbers since our project is not limited-days work. I may also not update daily but move to a routine where I update when there is concrete matter collected, to write about. Pictures will come in almost daily though, since it helps us keep a log of our daily acts.

Ahead, then!