We had been running a steady schedule for a while now, here at Street Smart. The younger lot from Parade Ground had started attending a primary school at Parade Ground in the mornings where our teachers accompanied them and helped the school’s staff in managing ad teaching all children there. From there, our kids came back with the teachers to Rein Basera, where after lunch everybody sat down for a few hours of activity-based learning. It is a neat arrangement and is very beneficial for the children.

The younger lot now settled into this routine, the focus then turned to the older lot- Naina, Rajkumar, Malti, Roshan and Raja. Pooja has gone back home to Bihar for some time but she will be back soon. The older lot is well-trained in the art of block-printing and the time that the older kids need to complete their daily work has considerably reduced. They have also become very responsible, I noted with pride. They help teachers in managing the younger children and they do it on their own accord now. This is, truly their program now.

But there was need for more. Melody, the Founder of JOYN (Facebook link here) who has been heading the block-printing part of Street Smart has now introduced sewing lessons for our older children. THAT, I say is what business is about. What it should be about. Developing the skills and capacities of the people who are part of the business, as much as developing excellent products for people outside. In fact, the two are interrelated when you take care of your people, your people take care of your business and provide excellence in everything they do.

JOYN has put in two sewing machines at Rein Basera, and so now thrice a week, the afternoons are spent training in sewing. Tina, a lovely young volunteer is heading this program and like all JOYN members, is wonderful with the children. In fact Malti and Roshan are very enthusiastic learners and are doing very well in the training.

There is yet another volunteer at Street Smart who is taking English lessons with the children. Christian is 19 years old and is very creative in his teaching methods. Though it has been a very short time since he started coming to Rein Basera, the kids have already warmed up to him.

The key to a good program is to continuously innovate to keep the children interested in coming to Rein Basera and such developments are always great for children. Aisling’s methods of teaching English to the children were fabulous and with Christian’s entry into the program, we hope the learning can be taken forward.

It has been very long since we compiled a photo-diary so we have set Monday as the time for new pictures.
Watch this space! 🙂