31st December, 2010
A lazy long day.. this wasn't how I would have like the year to end. And then, this happened..
Infosys has been running SPARK - Rural Reach Program (RRP) which is a one day program that aims at improving awareness of computers and the power of IT among children in rural India. The target audience for this programme is school children of classes 5th to 7th. This is also connected to the PC donation scheme of Infosys.
With regards to the above programme, I was contacted to help coordinate the programme in a Government school in this area. The person from Infosys (may be some manager) explained the thing in brief - some volunteers would be coming and a target audience of 200-300 (later increased to 500) would be reached. Some of her lines shocked me, she stressed on the following - every volunteer would bring their own laptop, none of the volunteers would get paid for coming on a Saturday, it is very fruitful for the students, the program is being conducted all over India for the last 5-6 yrs and it has been a great success, they will provide computers to all school which submit a request within 2-3 months and on on.
Then I asked her - there are more than 50 Higher Primary schools here (surely an underestimate, I don't know the exact figure), is there any selection criteria to organize the programme?
"There is no such criteria. You can select it. We will cover all the schools in the future. There are 1000 or more than 1000 schools in the country, we can't finish all schools at once, we will cover them slowly." And another round of praise for the programme and the volunteers followed.
We decided to work on that and the phone goes dead. The thought kept playing on my head and then suddenly I realized that Saturday is a half-day for schools. So I send her a sms -
"One more constraint, Saturday is a half day for schools. So it might be difficult to have it on a Saturday. Please check for other options.
Praveen"
And the call comes in a while -
The lady on the other end says, "I saw your message now. We have successfully run this programme for so many years. It is very fruitful for the students to spend time with us. It is because our DC suggested this organization we are contacting you. We have so many schools waiting in the pipeline and they invite us to come to their school. Other than Saturdays is not possible as we have a working day in Infosys. We can't do social work on weekdays. Would you do social work on a week day? We are not wasting the time of students beyond 7th and we are not wasting the time of students below 5th. We are only asking for 5th to 7th. I hope I have explained the point. Instead of sending a message, give me a missed call. I will call you back."
And some 45 min later, I get an sms -
"It can be conducted without affecting to their classes please verify with the school head master n let me at the earliest for further arrangements. Trust me from this program lot of govt. Schools have been benifited..thanks for coordinating n Wish u happy new year."
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This evening had raised some questions I couldn't quite answer. We live in the corporate era and this conversation exposed some realities for me. We have schools where students find it difficult to write in their mother tongue in High School, students who don't come to school unless they are served the mid-day meal and here is a corporate firm who will send their people on Saturday and expect the school to function full time. We have a person who thinks there are 1000 or more schools in India, and she is the same person who thinks their RRP sessions are very fruitful. Is that true Corporate Social Responsibility? Well, it is for Infosys (which is the best among the lot)!
I would agree that these exposure sessions would be good for children but have they been chalked out well to facilitate the learning process or are they just the picnic visits of those people where they show a few models of laptops? Can you plan to teach a kid without having any knowledge of that kid? Their show of skills (communication and presentation) may vastly undermine the skills of the teacher (in the eyes of the student) with whom the students would have to spend maximum time. Why shouldn't we train teachers? (Training teachers doesn't seem big enough in annual CSR reports, after all we feel more sorry for a child beggar than an old-aged beggar!). The programme may or may not reach the intended goals, however, their lifestyle, culture, etc. may influence the kids in ways we may never understand. May be for good or bad! Who cares what happens to a child in these remote villages, after all the software-walas don't get paid for spending time with that child!
I have questions all over, didn't know where to start and where these would end. This seems to be the harsh reality of the modern world. Why can't CSR be truly for nation building? Why should we be paid for spending a few hours for our nation? In spite of so many questions, I still have a hope that these sessions will help some kid somewhere and I will try to facilitate these sessions until I find answers to at least a few questions.
Would you do social work on a week day?
I don't know what to say for that. May be the answer lies in another question -
Does your hunger take leave on a Sunday? It surely doesn't in the countryside.
--buddi
0119
01 - 01 - 2011
