A look at jobs at Aarohi – A belief “who says jobs are only for adults or only for who knows the work. Can one learn while doing? Can one learn because one wants to learn?”.
We have hilarious stories about all our jobs – some jobs bring excitement and die down, while some bring frustration and then bring joy…some post are empty while for some we have a queue.
Campus Medic – Taking care of all the medical needs of community members at the campus. One child was falling sick frequently 8yrs old, so he became the perfect choice for campus medic – understanding diseases, home remedies, and other treatments.
Menu Manager – Bringing new recipes from various cultures. The job included understanding the food, researching food, making samples, and bringing variety in our menu. We have realized that some jobs are meant as “short-term” and the menu manager is one of them. We often have this post empty. But whosoever took this job, we relished new recipes. The post is waiting for long-termcommitments to fulfill our needs of a healthy, balanced, nutritious, and tasty menu.
Campus Tailor – Loose buttons or torn pants…you can connect with campus tailor for clothes repairing. After a long absence, our tailor, a 13yrs old is a little regular, piles of repairing clothes are almost zero now.
Campus Warden – It can be a leaking roof or termite on doors or loose window hook or broken floor or shortage of water or sewage blocking … just connect with our Campus Warden, 12yrs old, and you will be ensured that the works are attended within 24 working hours. On the job, he got into repairing our lighting and got interested in electronics more.
Pets Pals – Yes, we need pals for our pets. Pet Pal job is looking into their food, play, medical, growth, and overall well being. The pet pal,10yrs old, is understanding his own needs, struggling to understand research and its findings, we are still waiting to get variety in the menu of our pets. Medical care was attended immediately with utmost responsibility and understood in detail.
System Admin – Installing child safe Browser or repairing laptop … all tech needs are taken care of by our system admins. Yes, we have many admins – each one has adopted a laptop and mend them as the need arises. While they all are tech-savvy(as they claimed), they struggled to get most of the laptops repaired, but they have not given up. Some of them have mastered to solve one problem and keep solving recurring problems.
Aarohi Accountant – You can’t miss meeting our accountant,11yrs old when you visit the campus. From money management to entry into the software all was learned while on the job. We do have some goof-upsbut it’s very much managed, most of the time our balance is matching. We are doing good.
Captain Veggie – Growing and eating our own vegetables is one of our dreams. Captain Veggie working on making this dream true while learning from scratch what all goes into growing!
Local Guide – Who are our neighbors? What do they do? Who can help us with what (eg: potter); who needs our help (eg: farmer harvesting). Talking to them is not as easy as one can think, it requires the initiative to start a conversation, walk around on foot, and understanding mutual needs. After one trip to the Panchayat office, our local guide resigned as he could not take the pressure of talking to strangers. Our next guide arranged a successful learning mela in neighborhood schools. And the joy of that success was so fulfilling that no visit to the neighborhood is made after that. It was contending to achieve one event!
Campus Baker – We want to make our bread, cookies, and cakes. A team of enthusiastic bakers baking every week. We don’t know how to bake bread, but we are determined to bake. We had burnt cakes, half-cooked cakes, sugary syrups for the icing, hard crust…and finally eatable baked cake for bday parties, Apple pie, Cookies, baked potatochips, and our own bread. Rocket wood-fired oven is not easy to work, it needs an understanding of energy and patienceof slow baking. The recipe needs not only copying but also understanding of fractions (1/2 tbs and 1/3tbs are all jumbling).
PMO (publicity and media officer) – The attraction was the term “media and publicity” but the deterrent was to take feedback on writing. As our PMO has just begun to write blogs, he writes how much he can. He made some successful videos (which were approved and used in creating awareness about open learning), still struggling to write a blog that can convey the message. It’s not only the thoughts of writing but also the grammar which needs to be understood for it to be approved, but the efforts are continuing. It’s not only doing but bringing creativity and understanding media which needs time.
Ah! as a facilitator it’s more timeconsuming, requires more effort, and PATIENCE to get work done by all the learners on the job. But as said by Art Williams “It’s not going to be easy, but it’s going to be worth it” keeps us alive to mentor and create more jobs at Aarohi!