Srilekha introducing the camera to students at Peter Paul School

It’s been a real joy to join the efforts of Communities Rising in educating and empowering students in rural Tamil Nadu. While it is quite different from our busy home in the city of Hyderabad, the last week has been a welcome change for me. I’ve settled into a peaceful morning routine of cycling down the small country roads through verdant fields on either side, amidst coconuts and grazing cows. Later in the day we travel to three different schools in villages in the area: The Peter Paul School for differently-abled children, Analadi RC Primary School and Boys and Girls Secondary Schools, and the Vikravandi after-school program for fifth class students and hostel boys at the SAMSSS computer lab.

Stella's group at the Peter Paul School

Meeting all our new students and teaching them has been a great experience over the last week. As Srilekha pointed out, the students at the Peter Paul School are particularly endearing and there is a very tangible sense of a loving, helpful community as soon as you walk through the gates.

My group at the Peter Paul School.

My experience my first day there was truly impressive. We divided the class into three groups and each introduced them to both the digital and video cameras. I was working with Sathish, a college student who had made a film with Kara last year, who was well versed in the technology and a huge help in translating to the students. Thanks to Sathish’s translation skills, my group caught on to the concept of a photostory immediately. After he explained that the photos should fit together to tell a story, the students mobilized under the direction of a particularly creative student. They came up with the following narrative about a boy who is pulled out of school because of family troubles in less than one hour! While their creative skills are impressive, it is sad to see how prevalent and common-place the problem of child labor is in their communities. Check out their photostory below:

Communities Rising: Peter Paul Photostory from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

We have made significant progress in all our classes in the last week — introducing students to the technology, planning individual film projects and filming the necessary footage to complete the videos. The students have been hard at work running around to shoot scenes of their daily routines, girls playing various sports, tours of their schools and villages, music videos, skits, Tamil – English lessons and more! For our video about the village of Analadi, the fifth class students were even able to get an interview with a member of the Panchayat.

The fifth standard students filming with the flipcam.

The older hostel students have done a wonderful job planning unique and creative narratives and video topics. I was impressed that the hostel girls voted overwhelmingly to create a video about women in sports. The hostel boys at Analadi voted to write a short narrative about two boys to showcase the importance of discipline in education. They planned a video that shows the parallel stories of two boys in the same class — one who is  disciplined and another who is acting out and failing to study. The acting skills of this particular group were also fantastic. Little Muthuselva had all of us cracking up as he played the “bad boy,” traipsing into the classroom late and trying to cheat off other boys’ papers!

Students from the boys hostel planning their discipline video.

There is a lot of editing to be done in the week to come, but I am confident that we will have some very interesting final products to show the students. Unfortunately, they have a holiday break next week so we will be unable to screen videos to the hostel students who have already returned home for the vacation. The upside is that the Analadi boys will be able to finish filming their story with the computer teacher when they return and they will also have the opportunity to learn film editing once they finish shooting the remaining scenes. Stay tuned for the final products!