Wrapping up the last days

So, just a small update on how we're doing here in India. The weather is pretty hot, its 23:11 here now and im still sweating in my t-shirt in the lobby. But I personally am enjoying this heat, it's such a nice change to the temperature in Holland (no offense ;)). When we left for India over a week ago, the temperature was around 10 degrees. I heard from some friends that the temperature is better now though (around 18 degrees?).

The training is going good so far in my opinion, but I do think it's important that we also talk about how the implementation should go from here on. I am confident though about the users, especially the superusers. They're bringing up a lot of questions and are testing the system in every way possible, which is very good I think. We've still got one day left for MIS and 2 more days for general exercises and practicing.

A few days ago, some guy showed up in the bridge camp and I spoke with him for a while. He was a social activitist, trying to give more attention to child labour. He is currently touring through India on his bike by himself, visiting a lot of places where people are fighting child labour, and attending meetings about child labour. He's covered more than half of his trip now, which consists of driving a total of 18.000 (!!!!) kilometers in 90 days. I have a lot of respect for what he is doing, and it's good to see that a lof of the Indian population is also trying to fight child labour so actively.

I'm actually looking forward to my week's holiday as well. Even though its a major experience being over here, working with these people and seeing these children, we haven't seen a lot of India yet. Most of the time we only see the hotel, the road to & from the bridge camp, and the bridge camp itself. Rob is going back to Holland upcoming Saturday. My flight for Mumbai leaves 2 hours before Rob's flight. I've got a connecting flight to Jaipur from Mumbai, and there my holiday-trip will start.

Expert training

So, I think it's about time to give another update from our situation in India right? We're half way through our trip for Bloom (I'll be going on holiday for a week as well after the work is done for Bloom), and I think we have a pretty good impression on how the trainings are going so far. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we started out with the CMS Superuser training as planned. Although we had to improvise on our dayplanning a bit, I think our goals for these days were met. The superusers having experience with the 1.2 version of the system actually helped a lot. So, on Thursday and Friday we got started with the expert training. We try to invite the users to open up and to feel free to ask any questions they have, which is having a good effect I think. Because of the language barrier, it's really great that our collegue from Bangalore has such a drive to train these people (actually he used to be a teacher). Even though he joined the project last-minute, he's been able to explain the application to the trainees in notime. Giving the training at the bridge camp is actually very good I think, because you're constantly surrounded what it's all about : those kids. Every time we come to work in the morning, there's all these kids calling our names and greeting us, it's quite funny and touching at the same time.

Yesterday we went to see the movie "Clash of the titans" in the Imax-theater here in Hyderabad. We took an autorickshaw to get there, but we had to stop halfway because the light of this lawn-mower had some issues.


After continueing our trip, we got out and walked the rest on the Necklace-road, which goes all around this beautifull lake with the Budha-statue in it. It actually looks a lot like the statue of liberty in New York, and it was really nice to see the lights over the water and the couples strolling on the streets. After arriving at the cinema, we naturally had a meal in the most famous fast-food franchise in the world (do I really need to write the M-word here?). The cinema actually looked more like a shopping mall that they just happen to place a cinema in than the other way around.

Bridge camps and first day of training

(05-04-10)Yesterday we first went to the headoffice of MVF and met some people that are going to assist us with the trainings that we will give coming the next 2 weeks.

After meeting several people of the MV Foundation, we drove off to a girls bridge camp close to the border of Shankarpally.

We arrived at lunchtime and ate some tipical indian country food, what was really spicy.

After lunch we sat in a circle with all the teachers, and we had a conversation about what the bridge camp stands for and how MVF is supporting them.

Later that afternoon we visited some classes and spoke with some children about how their experiences in staying at the bridge camp.

Before we left, we handed out some presents to the children of the bridge camp and wrote some personal note in their guestbook.

(06-04-10)Today we got up early to go to the boys bridge camp just outside Hyderabad, which is also the location where we will give the trainings.

We got there by autorickshaw, which was a whole new experience for us. The most impressive experience on that ride was the (lack of) suspension on these vehicles.

When we arrived at the bridge camp we were welcomed by the warden of the bridge camp.

After that we visited some classes and spoke with some children about what the are learning in class, and try to give them an indication of how far away the Netherlands are.

After the trainees of the superuser training arrived, we settled down in one of the classrooms and setup the projector and laptop.

At the beginning of the training we had some short introduction, after which we gave the superusers an overview of the new features in the Child Monitoring System.

Tomorrow, we will discuss some more technical details of the Child Monitoring System at the superusertraining.

At the end of the afternoon we left the bridge camp to go back to the hotel. In the evening we had a walk through the crowded streets of Hyderabad and had some typical Indian pastry.

Written by Rob Smeding

Travelling to Hyderabad

After about 2 months of working on the Bloom project, Rob Smeding and myself got on the plain yesterday to start our visit to India. As everybody knows when you are travelling, you can never know what you can expect. Our flight to Mumbai was all good, and as a surprise our luggage made it as well on the same time! So, with our high hopes up, we got out of the terminal to search for out hotel contact-person. Unfortunatly, we were unable to locate them. The security officer of the airport helped us out by calling the hotel. Turns out the were expecting us at 11:30 AM instead of 11:30 PM, and there were no rooms available left. We arranged for a different hotel, so we did get a couple of hours of sleep before travelling to the domestic airport. Everything went really smooth there, and before we knew it we were standing at Hyderabad airport. The airport is very beautifull, its actually listed in the India top-5 of best airports. Unfortunatly, it's not allowed to take pictures of the airport, so I'll try to take some when we are going to leave from a distance.

From the airport, we got a cab to the hotel. After finally arriving at our final destination (the taxi driver had some trouble finding the hotel first), we also met with our colleague who had arrived this morning as well. Being tired from basically skipping a night's rest, we had a short breakfast and then went to our room to freshen up a bit and get some extra sleep. Tonight we'll be going to get some dinner, and we'll try to start fresh and sharp tomorrow morning.

My first impression up to this point are very mixed and overwhelming, but I'm very happy that our colleague from Bangalore to guide us during our visit.