Issue 1, July 2010

www.deepam.org.in

Founder's Letter

Karthikeyan Vijayakumar welcomes you to Deepam

Uroor Kuppam in Chennai, during our Children's Day Celebrations in 2009 –

Colours were splashed everywhere. Hands were dirty with paint; the children were encouraged to play with paint and colors by the Deepam volunteers. And the canvas ? oh, it was their tee- shirt . Every child was given a white tee shirt, to play with their imagination- to paint their tee- shirt, wear them and show them off, to the world.

Olcott School, Besant Nagar February 20th 2010 –

A bunch of happy & excited children showing off the photos they clicked.Children enthusiastically come to the front of the class, show us what they clicked, describe their photos and explain how they clicked. The activity – Children were given a digital camera to shoot photos on a theme.

Both events had so much in common – Children and the volunteers / mentorsthoroughly enjoyed and had lots of fun atthe event. The children learnt a new skilland were confident of talking about their work. This hands-on activity had engagedchildren and brought the best out of them. Children stretched themselvescreatively, since they understood what was‘taught’. I smiled, looking back at the long way we have come from and pondering over the way ahead.From a humble beginning 2 years ago with teaching a few students, Deepamnow reaches out to more than 200students, through the weekend learning program. From a simple curriculum at thestart, Deepam is now working on making learning more fun for these students. Volunteers at West Mambalam Centreprepare the weekly class plan around anactivity. They use visual aid / audio toengage students and make Englishlearning, a fun activity for the children. Volunteers at other Deepam centres toohave some interesting stories to share, asthey connect with the children and bring the best out of the kids. Needless to say, itis only because of our volunteers'enthusiasm and commitment in educating less privileged children that we havetravelled some distance so far. As we begin our 3

year, we will look tobuild on the base created so far. Withmore volunteers contributing time toteaching, more organisations extending support and teams at every centreexploring ways to create a fun learning environment, we are now more confidentthan ever in saying this - we will haveconfident young children graduating fromDeepam, year after year. As part of our anniversary celebrations, we have launched our first newsletter '

Oli

'to keep our volunteers and well-wishersupdated about the latest events at Deepam

and to help us stay connected. We welcome any contributions to Oli- do getin touch with us if you have something toshare. Until the next issue, happy reading!Regards,Karthikeyan VijayakumarCo-founder, Deepam

www.deepam.org.in

Deepam – Who are we?

By Meera Sundar

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives. ~Clay P. Bedford

This is the quote that best defines whatDeepam stands for. The idea for Deepam was born during an early morning run,over the steady sound of shoes hitting theroad. Ram and KK tossed ideas aroundfor 'Giving back to society', their mindskeeping pace with their feet. They realized that the tipping point in astudent's life - which makes him a life long lover of learning & trying new things - isthe birth of curiosity. Deepam wasconceived to augment school curriculumand instil in a child the curiosity to learnand give him the "keys" to the greatestpool of knowledge out there, theInternet. Along with it wasborn

BridgeTheDivide

- a group to unitepeople who are keen on 'Lighting theSpark and levelling the playing field'among children.Deepam was officially rolled out in thesummer of 2008 when a bunch of volunteers - mostly fresh graduates and working professionals in Chennai - startedteaching at Nalamdana (a self help group)in Perungudi- with just a couple of theirown laptops. The kids at Nalamdana wereeach as different as different could be- amix of bubbly, reserved, bright, boisterousand quiet kids; but with clear and big dreams for the future. We taught them how to handle laptops,the Windows operating system, Paint,Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The summer session of a few weeks was agreat experience for us volunteers and forthe kids too, going by their enthusiasmand performance in the informal end-of-session hands on tests. The experiencetaught us a lot of things too, and onceagain more ideas came in a torrent- andthe rest is history!Over the last one year, we have expandedto four centres in Besant Nagar area. Weteach for 2 hours per week at each centre,during weekends. Though we started off with computers, we realised with time,that reading comprehension & basiccommunication skills in English were also vital, to utilise what the internet has tooffer. We streamlined our curriculum andnow focus on four pillars - eachcomplimenting the other - English,Computers, General Awareness &Personality Development. This, we felt, would not only put the kids on the track