Girls and Jewelry - the Remix

As the girls club (more exciting group name to be decided by the girls upon my departure, impending!) has recently kicked off, I think it only appropriate to give credit where deserved: the Madhi principal Modi-sir gets all of the kudos for being so absolutely supportive - not only did he recruit all the girls for me before I even asked, but also he has given me each and every one of the girls’ free class slots so that I can speed up the 8-week curriculum into the 2+ weeks that I have left.

The girls are also wonderful and certainly deviate from the norm; that is, while the younger girls in my Spoken English class tend to be a bit reserved and shy, these 12^th standard girls are anything but! They are outgoing and talkative and creative – all very exciting and making my job as facilitator a lot easier, and they really set an upbeat tone that leaves everyone excited.

They really seem to be enjoying the various teambuilding games that I have played with them, but also very successful was our first real exercise and discussion! In this activity, I divided the girls into lots of small groups, and each girl received a handful of beads, different colors; the ultimate goal was to walk around and trade beads with each other until all the beads in their hand were of a single color.

The catch? Some girls could not move from the place they were rooted, some had to keep their hand behind their back and not look at what color they were giving away/ receiving, others had to give up whatever was asked of them, and finally, some girls did not even know the rules of the game and had to try and figure out what was going on. Of course, there were also the very few privileged girls who had all of their capabilities about them.

The discussion portion related the game to the larger societal view, and we talked about all the inequalities we see in India, how we react, etc. They were receptive to the very generous step taken between beads and real life, and they were engaged in the conversation. We finished with some quiet journaling time on what our personal biases are and how we can do our best to eliminate inequalities and prejudices in our daily life. Gutsy volunteers will share their thoughts during our next session, so I look forward to hearing what they have to say….

Thanks for reading, more updates coming soon!