AP National Green Corps meet with the Chief Minister Jan 2010

I was assigned the task of training the children of AP Government Boys School, Borabanda in effective communication in English about their activities under Andhra Pradesh National Green Corps.

Mr. W G. Prasanna Kumar, Director AP NGC connected me to the Principal Mr. Ranga Dev Reddy. With a lot of anticipation I reached the school on 20th January. I was directed to a classroom of about 50 children from 8th & 9th Standard.

After ice breaking and introductions, I asked the children to share with me the activities undertaken by them in their respective areas. When the children started sharing, I knew exactly why Mr. Prasanna Kumar wanted me to take an effective communication workshop with these children. A typical answer to my question was, "Good morning Madam, My name is dadada, I am from dadada school and from dadada group. I am taking the necessary steps to save water in my school. I am doing everything possible to do the required and save water for my planet." So my assignment was to change this assuring speech into a conversation with facts and figures.

In my first session my goal was to take the fear out of children so as to allow them to express themselves freely; to take the fear out of the so called foreign language English; to sow the seeds of original thinking and make them realise the importance of literacy and education. I used various tools like role play, team building, blackboard-chalk teaching and lots of talking (no wonder I have been sounding croaky for the last few days....)

The second session was at the Parade grounds in Secunderabad on 23rd January 2010. This time I was talking like a loud speaker to reach out to the ears of the children in the din around us with so many contingents and battalions practicing march pasts and formations for the Republic Day parade.

I divided the children into 5 groups of 10 children each. Each group was assigned responsibility of a particular aspect of NGC program - Water Management, Waste Management, Plants & Trees, Electricity and Land utility. I created a frame work and we put the activities in the frame work. The frame work had four aspects to it - Identify the issues, current activities undertaken, challenges faced & anticipated and opportunities for this year.

Third session was devoted to polishing the charts & speeches and training them to have a conversational style of communication with facts and figures rather than dreams and ambitions.

In the meantime, Mr. Prasanna Kumar was able to organize an appointment with the Honourable Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh - Sri. K. Rosaiah.

The children were full of anticipation and boarded the bus to reach the Chief Minister’s residence at 10.00am on 27th January 2010. At the residence of the Chief Minister we were thoroughly checked and lead inside. After about 30 minutes of wait, the honourable CM was with us. We had a photo session and whallah, my student conversed with the Honourable Chief Minister (for 45 seconds out of the 2 minutes assigned to three schools) and shared with him that his group is saving about 1200 litres of water everyday with the assistance of NGC and Vaishali Madam.

That moment I knew I was embarking on a bigger journey. 3 sessions of 2 hours with these children opened up the 'think beyond' in them. So, I have agreed to design a module for AP NGC who can then take it to about 5000+ schools in Andhra Pradesh to replicate it. The objective of this module which I am designing will be to take the fear out of expressing one's thoughts, to converse, to communicate in English language, to think, and to act.

Go Children, go AP NGC!!