SSS: Week 4

Sarvajanik Shikshonnayan Sansthan (SSS)

A-3/302, Vishal Khand, Gomti Nagar, Lucknow

226 010 (Uttar Pradesh) India

sssngoindia.org

Initial itinerary:

7-11 June, Almora

Working with community and discussing with district authorities

This week was not very productive. We were supposed to be in Almora doing further research but some problem with our accommodations made us travel back to our office in Lucknow. Instead of in the hostel where we stayed in the first week, we're living in our office! Good for us girls since we were placed in an A/C bedroom above it..:) love. it! The boys, however,  got it bad sleeping on the floor of Dr. Trivedi's windowless office, and under a ceiling fan.

Another plus for us (girls at least) is that we finally have unlimited access to the world wide web!  Time to check our accounts, mail, etc. update our blogs and chat and skype with our friends and family we miss from home.

Due to the change of schedule, us AIESEC interns used the first 2 days to meet, discuss and make reports of our individual research collected from the past three weeks. By Wednesday, we had sent it to KC. We met to further discuss it with them, and plan for the remaining 20 days of the project.

Here's the revised itinerary we all agreed on:

9 June, Lucknow

Meeting to discuss report, action points and schedule

10-11 June, Lucknow

"Weekend"

12-16 June, Hardoi

2 batches of meetings with focus groups

18-19 June, Lucknow

Meetings on HIV/Aids and with seed distributors

20-23 June, Almora

Meetings with the community and district authorities in hill station villages

Prepare presentations

24-28 June, Lucknow

Meetings and workshops with government

29 June, Lucknow

Press conference

The Plan

  

 The World Cup schedule to fill in our "weekends"

Since the meeting, we pretty much had the freedom to do anything we wanted. Yi Ni and Khar Khee took a trip to Jaipur, and the rest of us just lounged around the office being constantly online. On Friday, we went on a touristic tour of Lucknow visiting the Bara Imambara, taking the public bus, catching the sunset at the park, etc. It was a good day. 

OH! Also, we watched the WORLD CUP!  Daan had worried there wasn't a place in Lucknow where we could watch it. Turns out that the TV in the girls' room works. :) and we have ESPN! Woooh! We found out just in time for the RSA-Mex match.

Work was to start for the first batch (the "white group") on Saturday. The "very colorful group" on the other hand, have until Tuesday morning! Oh, the joy. 

Problems and challenges encountered

After weeks of moving from one place to another, constantly meeting groups and individuals, etc. this week of just staying put in the office and writing just one report  became a drag. Most days, we were just on our laptops looking for things to do. For me, personally, I needed this to accomplish the things I need for EU (coursework in AdMU), and to finally get serious searching for my next internship. It was monotonous and boring work. Not having things to do for my current work was not good, but I guess I needed the time for those personal things.   

On the plus side, I got to chat a lot with friends and family back home. And I finally have stuff written in this blog!