Antje from Germany reports on volunteering with SISP

17th February 2010

So here I am – back in Europe after my three months in India! Its odd being here again – feeling kind of torn between two so different worlds and lives. India has left me yearning. India has, after all those ups and downs, won me over!

I spent two of the three months at SISP, working closely with the teacher of the Stitching Unit and the project-students. These students spend about four months in each unit (we have the coconut jewellery, the paper bag and the stitching units) before it's finally decided where they will spend their one-year practice - depending on their performance.

Teaching was new to me and maybe that's one reason why it became an unforgettable experience!

Naturally it did take time to find my own way of teaching, of approaching the teenagers and children, of how to stimulate and motivate them. I found that was my biggest challenge and, looking back, I would have liked to have had more time being introduced to the culture, time to adjust (on both sides!) and finally time to find ideas and ways that work for both sides!

Something I found out fairly quickly though is that in India the children are not educated to use their own imagination - they are not encouraged to form an independent and creative mind, and this discovery really made me sad. In fact they are made to copy only – and copy everything.

So how did I cope with that? I felt I was not at SISP to introduce my own “western” style but at the same time I wondered if maybe it could be of some help. Could they benefit in one way or another from my experience and my way of organising work? Or maybe it would be the opposite – was I just bound to confuse them? How could I/we be creative if, in a couple of months, they would revert back to copying?

Apart from that it wasn’t all about creativity – I found that the stitching quality wasn't satisfactory. Now I know this is very subjective – my judgement may be driven by my experience and European background – but then, at the same time, the people who are going to buy our things ARE Europeans!!! I am not sure if I have managed to get them to work more efficiently.

I basically wanted them to organise the workshop – to separate things – store them in one place and keep them there - learn to take care of raw materials and finished products – learn a bit about colours and mixing them (hey, its all about personal taste in the end, sure) – how to stitch properly using matching colour thread, fixing the ends so the stitching won’t open up etc, not cutting holes in the fabrics just because they're not going to be part of the wallet ;) and so on.

There was a language barrier too - unfortunately there are no translators. Having them would, I think, make a huge difference and add to the success of teaching!

However I loved my time there and I wouldn’t want to have missed this experience – not for anything in the world. Anyone considering volunteering – make it at least three months though!

The children are such characters and so worth all the effort! I am glad they have been given a chance to attend school.

And last but not least - when I revisited SISP after three weeks of travelling, to say a surprise "hello" and bid my final farewell, I found that the workshop did still look good and that the wallets they had produced looked amazing!
:-) :-) :-)
XXX