Manthan and Community

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Manthan at Aarohi is another opportunity to get together and live together as a large community. Thank you all who could make for Manthan and play Kabbadi and of course added value to growth of Aarohi with your presence. Add your thougths, if anything is missed out

Here are some snippets

  1. Aarohi review team tried to hold attention using various mediums like games, drawing visuals, singing, acting.

  2. Show night had captive audience

  3. Learning mela was high in demand

Apart from above all other normal things happened – three teams worked in random to arrange for food, keep place clean and water the plants. We ate, we played, we watched stars and planets, we also slept under the sky.

Many subtle exchange of notes, thoughts and ideas – difficult to capture. Few topics of interest

  1. We reviewed various elements of LAA – Living at Aarohi via the following 6 buckets:

    1. CARE BUCKET – Sleeping, Personal Chores / Care, Food, Campus Care, etc

    2. DOING BUCKET – Basic Skills, Projects, Explorations, Campus Training, etc

    3. INTERACTION BUCKET – Live Stations, Outdoor, Kaa, Apprentice / Volunteering / Jobs / Enterprise, etc

    4. ACTION BUCKET Sunshine, Sports, Wait Until Dark, etc

    5. THINKING BUCKET Planning – Review – Reflection, Thought Club, Documentation, etc

    6. SOCIAL BUCKET Helpmates, Living together – socio-emotional dynamics, Parents Community, etc

  2. Social norms and behaviours and real life – Social etiquette different from real life to Aarohi life. How children cope or prepared ?

Few children discussed, shared their journey about different role plays between

AArohi life, life at home, with friends and so . One child shared he plays different

roles as per the environment, other child shared upset with real life, one more

shared they don’t understand or not as per his mindset and is useless to talk or

make friends. One parent shared to meet the expectation of being with them and

also find escape route and find space for yourself and them. The discussion

was quite interesting to understand each point of view.

“Parent’s need to connect and understand child’s growth”

  1. Roles of facilitators, parent and knowing about freedom and responsibility. Here are some presentations used to convert into drama in 15 minutes. Each team came up well cordinated drama (we have some tatalent within the community).

Some suggestions for next Manthan

  1. Cook together, Make something together, Listen to story, play games etc.

  2. Kids sharing about each project they have been doing – share the journey, struggle, learning etc.

  3. Have more of learning mela and more parents participating and involved.

  4. More participation in Show Night

  5. Start communication early to give enough time for preparation.

  6. Have less sessions about Aarohi – not much need to know or review about Aarohi 🙂 (all is well, rest is communicated to mentor facilitators)

  7. More time for informal interaction

  8. Have some parenting sessions /book reading / documentaries / parent involvement in arranging the event.

  9. Invite people to share skills (like live station)

  10. Parents to also write a small blogs of their experience of Manthan.

  11. This is add on to the above thought – Share your experience of learning journey of your child in general, this helps all in the community.

  12. This comes as add on (not discussed in Manthan) – Have smaller group discussion as per the need, rather whole group discussion and have more time for other more popular activities like wave boarding, kabbadi and antakshari.

Some more suggestions

  1. Make a database of places we visit for outdoor and KAA and people who visit Aarohi. This will have added load on us, let us see how do we bring this in practice. If any suggestions, any volunteer-raise your hands.

  2. Parents to share their skills, ranging from maths to stitching. Parents are requested to put their profile on the Aarohi team page on website – for this pl send the write up and one photo of yours to aarohi@aarohilife.org. See the aarohi team page here for reference.

  3. Strong desire for parents to participate in KAA and outdoor trips. Clarifying parents can come for Outdoor. For KAA – the matter is pending in the children’s court :).

  4. If possible share the information of people visiting campus in advance, so more parents can participate. This one is difficult to commit, as many times we get to know in the morning or day in advance or get cancelled at the last moment. This also increases our coordination efforts. Any other suggestions, volunteers to make this happen – raise your hands.

  5. All to check calendar in the beginning of the year to accommodate changes.

FINANCE FOR NEXT YEAR

There were no takers of financial stall – still we would like to share 🙂

  1. Next year budgeting cost of stay of volunteer from different countries. They bring huge learning opportunities for all at Aarohi.

  2. Every parents is resource for our kids. Every time you visit, pay the cost of stay. This cost is not built into fee.

  3. When you bring any resource person (assuming for a day or two) – it is considered that the resource person is coming voluntarily and is aware that he or she has to bear the food / stay charges. However, if for a specific person (or a group) we need to waive the charges or even remunerate them – pl discuss such a case in advance with us.

  4. If any resource person needs to be paid, we decide on raise funds by inviting more people and build cost in their contribution (last year we did for Tushar, Ramji and Shammi).

  5. Financial Contribution of each child for next financial year is 1.1Lakhs (from June 2016 to April 2017). May is holiday at campus only fixed cost is inbuilt in fee.

  6. More than this If you need to understand about fee and finance, come to financial stall in next Manthan.

Looking forward to next Mantan


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