Once upon a time, PDG Martin Gutsche & his wife visited India in February 2008, as house guests of RC Ambattur President Sudha Umashankar. Sudha took them around Ambattur where RC Ambattur had long term projects, Ambattur Rotary Hospital and TV Nagar school. Sudha also showed them Iniyam Udayam NGO with whom RCA was doing project papa to address malnutrition. Iniya Udayam offered value-based education, summer camps, Job oriented programs skills training for youth and Government school kids. This triggered the thought of an After school support center.
The neighborhood had many low income families, with contractual labor and single parent homes. Then started community needs assessment, stakeholder involvement through many simple interventions. Quality instruction for holistic development, progress traced on accepted metrics , documentation were the norm. Rotractors of Ambattur with Rotarctors from the district did road shows to mobilize students and parental consent. There was resistance from local leaders, parents, schools since the concept was new. With more resistance came more determination. The school started functioning using local graduates trained by RCA team. All teachers, housekeeping staff were paid though the services were available at no cost to the beneficiaries. The team worked under the leadership of Kavitha Narasimhan, a professional Social activist and Rtn. Upendar Bhatia.
2014, Rtn Upendra Bhatia met the Nuemayer Foundation through Rtn Martin Gutsche in Oldenberg Germany and received a grant to refurbish the building and for the day to day expenses for 2 years. Funds raised alongwith Neumayer Foundation and United way paved the way for the construction of 3 levels of 2,500 square feet building with 3 floors, our Ambattur Rotary Neumayer Trust Community Centre.
Ambatturians donated frequently for food, accessories, organized summer camps, teacher training, student support, facilitated learning. International Association of Facilitators , IAF during their Fac week offered career guidance sessions. Every day nutritious food is given and supplied by local vendors.
Our vision is to provide these children with
Safe environment to play, learn and grow.
Improve School preparedness.
Help with homework so that they attend school next day with confidence.
Prevent Absenteeism and encourage children to learn.
Upgrade their language skills in both English and Vernacular learning.
We offer peer support “Naanal club “ in which the students are divided into four groups and do monthly activities. The activities include indoor activities like art & craft, drama, games, debates etc and outdoor activities like campaigning for a social cause in the community, building awareness about clean environment and games. This gives all the children an opportunity to interact with students in the centre across age groups and people in the neighbourhood.
Schools which had resisted sending students now have asked us for help with preparing kids for school final exams. So classes are held during weekends for exam coaching and college or vocational schools admission. Parents and community are very happy with our center.
The center needs to be regularly painted, 3rd floor roofing to be provided, solar panels fixed,we plan to form a corpus. Center space is available during the day time, we hope to start vocational training since economic strength is valuable, for development. Alumni of our center need to be involved as donors or form an RCC. Looking for hand holding locally by a neighbourhood association since the space is growing. We invite clubs world over to look for a visit where you can interact and replicate the model. We invite partnerships to develop the space by buying some land closeby. Dreams are big, dreams happen because all stakeholders feel the impact of the project and take great pride in being an integral part of the Neumeyar After school support center, a long term project of RC Ambattur, RID3232.
Vasanthi Ranganathan
RC Ambattur
vasanthiranganathan@hotmail.com
Join BELRAG at the RI Convention
BELRAG will host a booth at the 2024 RI Convention in Singapore! We need volunteers to greet Rotary visitors, share your BEL projects, and encourage involvement with BELRAG. Click the link below to sign up for a shift or two. BELRAG members may promote their club projects at the booth - but we ask that you also take a shift sometime during the convention. Join us at Booth #1622
This year's theme is STEMtastic Adventures! and will take place September 30 - October 3rd, including Alliance Member Day on October 4 at World Bank offices, Washington DC. The event will include significant tracks on FLN, supporting marginalized learners, and reaching learners in challenging educational environments.
Last year's Symposium, our 13th annual, was the first global STEM education conference. We had representatives from over 40+ countries and 250 attendees join us, including participation from several Ministries of Education, such as delegations from Liberia, Ghana, and Malawi.
The BELRAG Annual General Meeting will be held on Tuesday, 25 June. We will host the meeting at two meetings to accommodate members around the world (08:00 and 20:00 Eastern Daylight time) . At the meeting, we will elect board members and officers for the 2024-25 Rotary year. It is an opportunity to review BELRAG activities of the past year and plan for future programs. Information about the agenda and proposed slate of officers will be shared separately. To register for the AGM, click link below
