i have once again failed to update the blog on a regular basis...again there are no particular reasons except laziness and the fact that i am not a very spontaneous writer also does not help! :-(
anyway, the work at chotti si asha has really been going great...the working hours have extended and so has the enthusiasm of the children and the grown ups!! the tailoring team is proud of their bags and is now trying harder to make better bags with better finishing...we are also trying to get some professional help in our designing.
our "inspiration files" have been quite a hit and since our exhibition, the "file making" team (they have also kept a name for themselves - Jantaram Mantaram) has been busy making files to fulfill a few orders that we got during and after the exhibition. Here again, we are working on standardizing the design as well as improving the quality of the files. Amit has kindly agreed to take up this herculean task and is doing an awesome job at it.
the younger kids are still working on the penstands but we have plans to expand the product base with them like coasters, paper shopping bags and jewellery.
what we need to work is on our marketing efforts as well as on improving our designs and quality. We do need dedicated and innovative volunteers who can help us in working with the children as well as help us in our marketing efforts.
As for the younger kids, we need to spend more time with them...and teach them more of basic hygiene that includes taking bath and wearing clean clothes...no matter how many clothes i give them...they are almost always wearing dirty clothes and are not able to keep their old clothes for long. they are very quick at losing things and generally don't have a change of clothes and that is one of the reasons they don't agree to take bath. We have started this rule that once they wash their old clothes, we would give them a new set of clothes. It is working fine but the issue that i found with this model is that the kids forget to pick their clothes that they wash and honestly speaking, i am generally not able to follow up on this and so the washed clothes get lost :-(
Recently, we assigned each kid an individual space where they could keep their stuff and we are giving them incentives to manage their clothes and their respective areas...the kids have welcomed this idea with open arms...let us see if we will be successful in this experiment. (interestingly, we didn't want to spend a lot of money in getting these lockers made so we all scratched our brains to find a cheap solution. so we bought a wooden three sided box made of "phattis" that are sold in the fruit market for Rs. 15 a piece...these boxes are used to ship fruits (mainly apples) from himachal to this region...we stacked these boxes one on top of the other with the open side facing outside and voila, our lockers were ready in about 10 minutes!! i will post some pictures soon).
anyway, the work at chotti si asha has really been going great...the working hours have extended and so has the enthusiasm of the children and the grown ups!! the tailoring team is proud of their bags and is now trying harder to make better bags with better finishing...we are also trying to get some professional help in our designing.
our "inspiration files" have been quite a hit and since our exhibition, the "file making" team (they have also kept a name for themselves - Jantaram Mantaram) has been busy making files to fulfill a few orders that we got during and after the exhibition. Here again, we are working on standardizing the design as well as improving the quality of the files. Amit has kindly agreed to take up this herculean task and is doing an awesome job at it.
the younger kids are still working on the penstands but we have plans to expand the product base with them like coasters, paper shopping bags and jewellery.
what we need to work is on our marketing efforts as well as on improving our designs and quality. We do need dedicated and innovative volunteers who can help us in working with the children as well as help us in our marketing efforts.
As for the younger kids, we need to spend more time with them...and teach them more of basic hygiene that includes taking bath and wearing clean clothes...no matter how many clothes i give them...they are almost always wearing dirty clothes and are not able to keep their old clothes for long. they are very quick at losing things and generally don't have a change of clothes and that is one of the reasons they don't agree to take bath. We have started this rule that once they wash their old clothes, we would give them a new set of clothes. It is working fine but the issue that i found with this model is that the kids forget to pick their clothes that they wash and honestly speaking, i am generally not able to follow up on this and so the washed clothes get lost :-(
Recently, we assigned each kid an individual space where they could keep their stuff and we are giving them incentives to manage their clothes and their respective areas...the kids have welcomed this idea with open arms...let us see if we will be successful in this experiment. (interestingly, we didn't want to spend a lot of money in getting these lockers made so we all scratched our brains to find a cheap solution. so we bought a wooden three sided box made of "phattis" that are sold in the fruit market for Rs. 15 a piece...these boxes are used to ship fruits (mainly apples) from himachal to this region...we stacked these boxes one on top of the other with the open side facing outside and voila, our lockers were ready in about 10 minutes!! i will post some pictures soon).
