My Choice Internship-an Epilogue of Sorts :)

Having finished six months as a Choice Intern, I think it is only natural that my final blogpost (as a Choice Intern for Writeherewritenow)will be an overview of whatever I have worked on in the past six months and the invaluable experience that this internship has given me.

I had first read about Choice on a poster that was put up at my University ( Jadavpur University) and I remember being fascinated by the Project at once. After rushing home, I dispatched an application immediately. Bishan got in touch with me promptly and asked me to come over and meet him at Seagull's Circus Avenue office.

The wonderful thing about the Choice internship is that it allows a tremendous amount of flexibility. For instance, when interns do apply, they are asked to list their interests and their interests are matched with an organisation that they may wish to work for. I had dabbled with the idea of working with folk musicians and my interests were listed as writing and Music. Because it was term time, I could not possibly spend my time talking to folk musicians and simultaneously learn their craft because it would mean that I would not be able to balance my academics with my internship. Instead, I decided to opt for my other love-my love for writing.

I've been fond of writing ever since I've been a kid. When I heard about Writeherewritenow from Bishan, I was really excited. I was thinking of starting out with my Individual Project (which would mean me designing the module entirely on my own, only to be guided by my mentor)but after much brainstorming, Bishan and I decided that it would be a good idea to do an internship before embarking on an Individual Project.

I met Megha first. Megha invited me to come and watch a Writeherewritenow workshop before I made my mind up about the internship. My first " unofficial" workshop had Richa telling the children how to script superheroes. One little child, Chirayu, all of eight, gingerly came up to me and asked me how to spell glasses ( His superhero was Harry Potter). Chirayu then decided that 'g' just didn't look nice with a tail, so he decided to do away with it. Finally, there was only a 'c' left.

Little had I known then that I would end my six month internship with Many such Memories. During my six months as a Choice Intern, I was expected to help market the site, help design the workshop modules, conduct a few workshops, handle press and publicity for the website, jot down the minutes of every workshop that was held and assist in conducting the workshops.

Some very interesting ideas were experimented with during the course of my Internship. There was the translation workshop, where children were given a piece in English and they could translate it either into Hindi or Bangla. Then they were given a piece either in Bangla or Hindi and asked to do the same. Then there was a Doodle and Decipher workshop where the children were given themes and were asked to draw. Based on the illustration, they were asked to write a story.

Finally, it was a great pleasure to work with a wonderful and committed team and I'm glad that I decided to work with WHWN.

Workshop at Disha foundation

On the 16th of November, Writeherewritenow conducted a Workshop at Disha Foundation. Richa had told me at the outset that I would have to conduct this workshop at the very outset but honestly, I was really nervous about how the workshop would turn out to be. Megha, Richa and I had discussed the concept of the Workshop earlier and we'd brainstormed together till we decided that we would conduct a performance related workshop. We would hand out stories to the children, divide them into groups and finally ask them to rewrite the story with dialogues. Then, they would have to enact their stories so we could get a sense of what they'd written or how they'd interpreted the tale. We also told them that they could work in English, Bangla or Hindi and add songs or dances to their performances if they wanted to. I was quite nervous about the performance bit of it because I'd never conducted a workshop that dealt with performance but Megha reassured me and said that if I went wrong, she'd take over from there.

Since I am nearing my last month of interning with Writeherewritenow, let me just take this opportunity to say that I've had two really fantastic mentors who have guided me every step of the way. I have learnt so much over the last six months and whenever I've made mistakes, I've been taught how to rectify them. A big thank you to Bishan as well who has not only been keeping track of everything that is being done but who also took the time out and actually attended a workshop and took photographs. He has also been brutally honest in terms of feedback, something that I really appreciate. So thank you so much :)

Getting back to the Workshop, I think the kids really enjoyed the workshop and we have videos of them performing which I will upload soon

More later!

Workshop at British Council

Situation 1

Aloo Prasad Yadav and Ramdev Dubey are names of school Principals. Aloo Prasad Yadav takes a special class for the students. He teaches Bhojpuri. Ramdev Dubey teaches a Pathshala.


Situation 2

A grumpy teacher becomes a loving one when she accidentally breaks her leg and has the children taking her to the hospital.

Situation 3

A young princess with beautiful green eyes and a crown set with precious stones cannot win over her subjects because she is rude and arrogant.

These were some of the things that the young children aged 10-14 came up with at British Council during the October 25 Workshop that was Conducted by Writeherewritenow.

Richa gave the children leads, saying that in order to create a character, one must focus on Appearance, Attire and Personality Traits.

Then, as a kind of warm up exercise, Richa asked the children to concoct characters of a thief, a princess and a school principal, keeping the above factors in mind.

Finally, she asked them to focus on "character growth" telling them how if a character did not grow in a story, it would be a flat character.

This workshop culminated into many interesting stories.

Diary Writing Session Article in the Statesman

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=18&theme=&usrsess=1&id=223987

On September 14, Writeherewritenow organised a 'Doodle and Decipher' Workshop for its members. Because it is examination time, only 6 members showed up which was quite a disappointment. Megha, Richa and I had come up with the module, mailing each other and brainstorming over telephone conversations. The idea was to get the children to draw and then exchange their drawings with one another and write a story based on that. Each child was given two blank sheets. One blank sheet was divided into four squares where the child had to draw a human character, a scenery, an image and an object. The children were then told to exchange their papers and they came up with stories ranging from humorous to gruesome.

Today, we went to Frank Anthony Public School. 60 children took part in the Workshop on story starters. On 27th, we do a journaling session with the Frank Anthony Students and see how they respond to it.

Diary Writing Session

Aparajita, a Voices Co-ordinator with the Statesman, makes notes while the girls are busy writing



The Modern High School Students at the Workshop





All smiles after the Workshop


In my first post as a Choice Intern, I had discussed the importance of the Arts and the concept of Arts as Therapy. The idea originated from " The Diary of Anne Frank"- a diary read and acknowledged the world over. Anne Frank was only thirteen when she began to write and she wrote during times of war. As an adolescent,she had to come to terms with internal strife while also negotiating her way through the Holocaust.

The group of children we addressed at Modern High School for Girls today were from classes six,seven and eight.

The session started with Megha telling the children about conflict and how it is important to explore one's feelings and to put those thoughts down on paper. One child said that the diary was like a "friend" to her, while another thought it was important to write a diary because it helped her to implement the vocabulary that she had acquired from her favourite books. Megha went on to tell the children that in interpersonal human relationships, a certain degree of expectation is inevitable. However, as far as Diary Writing is concerned, a diary can be a non-judgemental friend.

Richa took over from here and told the children to write about themselves. She asked them to introduce themselves on paper, but in an "unusual" manner, assuring them that they would not have to read out anything that they had written. The next exercise was called the "cheering up" exercise where the children had to list five things that made them happy, sharing any two of the five things if they chose to do so. The next exercise involved writing about fear and memories of humiliation.

The idea of this Workshop was to help children put down their thoughts down on paper and delve into the process of self-discovery.

Translation Workshop Article in the Telegraph

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080805/jsp/entertainment/story_9646855.jsp

Translation Workshop

Writeherewritenow organised a workshop on translation at Disha Foundation,a centre of learning for underprivileged children.
The idea was to ensure that the Writeherewrite now members-most of whom come from very privileged backgrounds could mix with the Disha kids and work with them as a team. Before they were split into groups of three,the Disha children and The Writeherewritenow members (and the new children who attended the workshop for the first time) sat separately,but when they were put into groups, they realised that they would have to work together and began to interact with one another.

The first Creative Writing Exercise was a rather lighthearted one-we called it the icebreaker and gave them words like Nyaka,Paka,Dhishum Dhishum,Chulbuli and Whatever to convert into different languages.

After that,we gave them Sukumar Ray's Ramgarurer Chana to translate.This was a rather difficult poem to translate but Ahaan Ghosh (from Writeherewritenow) and Sujay Tiwari (from Disha) turned out to be the bright sparks in their team and came up with this as their translation:

Ramgarur's Child is a monster
who thinks laughing is a disaster
Telling it funny words is in vain
Everyone laughs at it and yet,it stares
everywhere.

It doesn't want to sleep
and only tells itself
If I ever laugh in my life.
I will beat myself up.

It doesn't go near the woods
as it believes
that the south winds may tickle it
and make it laugh all the time

Its heart is very gloomy
like the dark clouds in the sky
The soul wants to laugh aloud
Yet,it tries to stop itself
With all its might.

At first,the children were apprehensive about translation and we asked them what they thought Translation was. As they were translating, we gave them tips on how to translate.

Next came a Hindi song called Ma from Taare Zameen Par.We ended the session with an Akbar Birbal story.

Mrs Neena Singh and Mrs Ranjana Roy have been tremendously helpful in helping me coordinate and Organise the workshop. A big thank you to Megha and Richa as well calmed my rather jittery nerves (as this was the first workshop that I was conducting.)

Last but definitely not the least,a huge thank you to the Disha kids and the Writeherewritenow kids,for making this event possible.

This week...

This week has been about writing letters and coming up with Concept Notes. I am happy to declare that Writeherewritenow will be having a workshop at the Disha Foundation on the 27th of July (Next Sunday) and the workshop will be on Translation. Also,I've been looking up data and preparing the module for my work on Sunday. More updates later :)

This Week...

This last week has been rather interesting. I have been blogging on two blogs (The Choice Blog and the Writeherewritenow Blog. Since I don't want material on the blogs to overlap, I've decided to write about my Experiences and personal growth on this blog while I'm going to be documenting news of the Workshops on the Writeherewritenow Blog.


This week, I've had a meeting with Sanjoy Mukherjee of NIE who seems interested in the "Writing as Therapy" idea, but I'm still awaiting confirmation from him.

Like I've already stated in my previous post, Writeherewritenow has a Facebook Group. The Facebook group is really helping in terms of networking and getting people to write guest columns for Writeherewritenow. We already have one for August and the ones for September, October and November are on their way.

The idea is to ensure that Writeherewritenow an active online community and so participation is absolutely essential. I've been getting hold of kids and telling them to write. However ( I don't know whether this is true for only the kids that I've been interacting with or kids in general) they are far more comfortable playing with Playstation 2. So it really IS a good idea to get them involved in writing.

On the very first day that I met Megha, she explained to me that the site was for people who wanted to take writing seriously and it didn't NECESSARILY mean Creative Writing. The Website is also important for children who want to become editors or go into publishing later on.


I've been having a lot of fun, working and learning. I've made some really stupid mistakes as well (largely due to ignorance and inexperience), but it's a learning experience and I'm enjoying every moment of it.

The Week that Was

The week started off rather badly and affected me more than I thought it would. After having been promised a meeting at Crossword Bookstore, I went there all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed hoping that I would be able to sit down and discuss what Writeherewritenow was all about with the Marketing Manager of Crossword.

What I thought would be a half an hour meeting turned out to be a twenty second meeting, with the Marketing Manager telling me that they "only organise stuff during holidays". When I politely inquired as to whether they have events on Saturdays and Sundays,she said that they did and asked me to "leave my stuff behind. I had the Writeherewritenow posters with me,so I left them at Crossword and came out of the Bookstore.

Thankfully,the rest of the week was brighter.Writeherewritenow has one new member this week and a lot of paperwork has been sorted out.I am aiming to set up at least two Workshops this month,one of which will be for WritehereWritenow members. I am also trying to get the Lifeline Project to kickstart.Will keep updating this blog as and when I get things done.

What I learnt this week was to not take things and situations for granted and to take setbacks well (I obviously didn't, in this case),but I have a long way to go and these are merely stepping stones which will help me learn to do my work well.

About Self-expression,among other things :)

Hello everyone!

My name is Reeti Roy and I'm a second year student of English Literature and I'm studying in Jadavpur University,Kolkata. As part of the Choice Youth Leadership Programme,I will be working with an Organisation called "WritehereWritenow"(which I will refer to as WHWN henceforth), an Online Writing Community for Schoolchildren.

WritehereWritenow conducts workshops every month for schoolchildren between the ages of 12-14. My work will be to ensure that people from classes nine to twelve also develop an interest and decide to pursue this course. Whwn charges its members a nominal fee of Rs Rs 500 annually and conducts a number of Online and Offline courses.

I will also try to get Clubs, Schools and Bookstores interested in our venture. I will also help to devise the Modules of the Creative Writing workshops that we will conduct.

So from next month,I'll probably be hopping around, setting up meetings, talking to people about WHWN, getting down to knowing and understanding the intricacies of WHWN myself and hopefully coming up with creative ideas on how to market WHWN :)

WHWN is also going to be conducting "Diary Writing Sessions" in schools. So how does this thing work? Are we going to ask people to read out from their diaries? Is this a way of improving one's writing? Absolutely not. This is an age old method of therapy. Today,teenagers have to deal with a lot of angst. Sibling Trouble,Pressure from parents with regard to Academics and trying to fit in with one's peers just add to all the mayhem in a teenagers life. And the fact that West Bengal has the highest number of suicides happening isn't just a cold statistic anymore.We're not psychiatrists or even psychologists, but we do believe that Arts IS therapeutic and all we want schoolchildren to do, is to write about their troubles and experiences so that they can give vent to their frustrations.We want to use the Arts as a way of Therapy.Some people paint.And others,they listen to music.We want to encourage people to write away their agony.We also want to ask the students how they feel before and after they write.After the writing session,we will have an open discussion and we will ask young people about what it is that irks them about their lives and what are the niggling fears and anxieties that they are battling on a daily basis.(It will be voluntary,of course.No one will be forced to speak if they don't want to.)We don't know how well this is going to be received,but I think that this is something that is extremely important and something that we have to do.There is a chance of schools shying away saying "this doesn't happen in our schools"but I think it's necessary to be persistent about such issues.

I will keep documenting my experiences on this blog as I go along.


In the meanwhile,do check out our website:WritehereWritenow