Spelling Competition in Pune Schools -

5000 children participated

Steria India CSR is organizing an inter-school national spelling competition for children of all Steria supported schools across Noida, Chennai and Pune. The preliminary rounds will be held internally in the schools by dictation of English words with varying degrees of “difficulty”, to decide on the top performers in each school as well as the top performing school in each centre. From this list, the top three or four children will be selected as members of the centre team which will compete with similar teams from the other two centers in a grand finale to decide the national champion. The national final is expected to coincide with the Steria One Day Challenge to be held in October.

Apart from fostering a competitive spirit between the Steria supported schools, the purpose of this contest is to inculcate the reading habit in children, make full use of the books and libraries set up by Steria, the use of the self learning English language software installed in the computers at the centers set up by Steria, serve as an eye opener for teachers about the proficiency in English of their students and thus over a period of time and with remedial measures bring up the general level and quality of English learning among the children of Steria supported schools.

The first round of this competition was completed in 9 schools in Pune, between 09 to 18 July 2009 involving more than 5000 children. Steria staff volunteers, the Steria teacher team, the school authorities all played a very important supporting role in ensuring that the first round went of successfully. The results are being tabulated to decide on who will go on to the next round. Similar rounds are being conducted in Chennai and Noida.

The impact of the first round is already beginning to be felt. Teachers have reported increased usage of the libraries and the demand for dictionaries also seem to have gone up. In the final analysis this is all what the spelling competition is about. While there will be competition and there will be lots of fun, all this is worth the while if at the end of the day, the children understand the importance of being well versed in English and there is a tangible shift in the desire among children to be more proficient in English.

Life Skills Training for Pune children

More than 1200 students attended

From 08 July to 11 July’09, the Pune CSR team organized a life skills training for children of three Steria supported schools, namely Dyandeep Vidyalaya, Ganage School and Nigdi Girls HS. The training was imparted by Sakav a well known NGO which works in this area and more than 1200 students of Class 8 and Class 9 participated in this program.

The program primarily focuses on sex education, and hence the contents of the program were explained to the parents and teachers of the school before the children were actually exposed to the program. Sakav mainly imparts knowledge with the imaginative use of pictures, slides, diagrams, and through role play sessions and games. The children were quickly put at ease and were encouraged to ask questions and clear all their doubts and misconceptions. All they had to do was to write their question on a piece of paper and drop in a box for the instructors to explain and answer the questions. The questions remained anonymous as the children were not required to indicate their names on the paper. Infact the program so effectively cleared doubts pertaining to common problems faced by the growing child especially during adolescence, that even the parents were keen to be exposed to the course. Steria Pune CSR will shortly be organizing a similar workshop for parents shortly.