Aaranyak: A Rural Alternative Learning Space

Stories of changes:

1. Sandeep (name changed) is in 7^th grade who has been with us since past two years. His father is a farmer and mother is a farmer and does work in the home as well. He has a younger sister and lives with his grandparents.

Sandeep loves playing sports, learning origami and like to do science experiments. He also enjoys reading books on our library day intervention, and likes to be creative and do everything around that. He is always enthusiastic to learn something new.

Sandeep teaches his friends and neighborhood children about what he has learnt in our activities and likes helping others especially in his home. He says that he has learnt that housework is everyone’s responsibility. After watching our play on gender equality during Child rights week (14^th -20^th November), Sandeep said that ‘ women must be given equal rights and be given choice of what they want to do. ’

Over the time, we have observed that he has grown more confident about himself, he believe that if he tries, he will be able to do well and learn more, though sometimes when he doesn’t get something quickly, he does get frustrated. Whenever he has any questions or faces any challenges, he tells the facilitators without hesitation.

Unfortunately, Sandeep also faced bullying, so he used to not talk much or did not come to our point. Then our facilitator spoke with other children and also spoke with him on one-on-one basis, so he started coming regularly. He used to feel embarrassed because of his body weight issues, but now he feels ok with his body and has been able to accept himself.

2. Rajni (name changed) of 7^th grade is a natural leader. She loves drawing, gardening, learning new things and teach younger children. She helps teaching younger kids and helping her peers. Rajni is very strong-willed person, and had mindset that she has to win. Whenever she felt that she or her team is not doing well, she would stop playing and insist that others stop playing too. However, with learning many cooperative plays and talking with the facilitators this tendency has decreased, she is able to accept that she may not win or do well all the time and that is ok. This has resulted in better relations with her peers.

3. Megha (name changed) is a 12-year-old and a science enthusiast with very inquisitive nature. She used to feel shy about asking these questions like, ‘how wind is created?’ to ‘why rain falls down instead of going up?’ and now she asks these questions to her facilitators and sometimes her school teachers. Megha wants to do many science experiments and keeps learning more. She used to be very shy and hardly spoke, but now she feels more confidents and participates enthusiastically in every activity. She likes to take leadership during games and sports and teach others. She also comes up with new games research about new games, and teach to others.