The Sweet Moments !!!

Here comes my blog after nearly two months at SELCO Foundation !! I had been traveling and on the way encountered some really interesting events and met some really interesting people on the way. One thing love about my job is that it takes me to beautiful places. I am working on solar fence and for the past one month I have been approaching various dealers and customers of solar fence.

First was a visit to a farm nearby, on Western Ghats. A farmer whose land was frequently visited and destroyed by elephants, deers and baisons. He had put up a fence three years ago and I was on my way to meet this customer. Believe me, getting to his farm was a mini trek. I had been with my colleague and we had to park the bike 2km down the hill. It was the first week of July and the monsoons had arrived in Malnad. During my climb up the rains had already come and I was struggling with the umbrella in one hand and a raincoat that protected only my upper body and the rain was getting my jeans wet. On the way up we crossed a beautiful stream. 

The beautiful stream !!!

Had to stop by this stream to enjoy the water carefully caressing my legs

Walking up the hill a kilometer we reached his farm and I was totally was engulfed in the beauty of nature around me. There were coconut tree, areca trees, paddy and a beautiful traditional malnad house, and protecting the whole property was the solar fence. Before I met the farmer I never knew what magic a fence can do neither did I have the clear idea of working of a fence. I was amazed by the way the farmer was explaining all about the fence. Sitting in SELCO Labs, after a one week research on the web I had a picture of fence in the mind which consisted of a panel, regulator, battery, energizer, pole and wires. Going there made me realize that fence has so many other components too. Fence also has tighteners that is used to keep the fence wires tight and also an equipment to tighten the wire to the tightener.

Tightener

Then the farmer was explaining to me the grounding aspects of the fence. After a one hour discussion with the farmer I realized that he knows so much about fencing and I had collected so much information from this customer.

The second visit was to Puttur, to meet the branch people and understand the demand for fencing in those areas. Again me and my colleague went in his bike. As usual it was raining, and this time the bike ride was adding to the chaos and making me more wet. But it never bothered me. I had so many beautiful things to look around. Travelling on the Ghats can be so mesmerizing. One the way found this stunning river.

One of the bridges that we crossed on the way to Puttur

The river that was so pure, so serene !!! 

My colleague had to work on a paddy seedling transplanter on a nearby farm, and I had spotted this an elegant butterfly.

This beauty queen had the time to pose for my click !! 

 Now, this is my second travel regarding solar fence and I was loving it.
Next was a place called Sullia which is 3 hours from Belthangady. A visit to a site nearby on top of the mountains was breathtaking. The following day I was in a farm in Uppinagady which is 2 hours from Belthangady. Look what I found in the farm, a fungus that doesn't really look like 'fungus'.

Fungus can look attractive !! ;)

Their Enthusiasm knows No Bounds !!

Wow!! Here I am blogging not as an intern but as a core team member of SELCO Foundation. It has been two weeks into my new job as a 'Community Solution Engineer' and I am loving every bit of it. One of the programmes I am looking into is 'Children - A Window to Community Issues'. Why I am blogging about this particular programme is because children have always been my fascination and they never miss a chance to mesmerize me.
Well the programme objective is to use the children to bring out the issues in the community and also dig out the solution from these young minds. Every programme starts with baby steps towards the greater purpose. The idea of this programme is a month old and 11/07/12 was the day the programme took the first baby step. The first step of the programme was to actually go to the school and start interacting with the students of 7th standard (13 years old) in a rural government school in Kukkavu which is 18km from Ujire. The school has 138 students, and has primary and higher primary classes. We are also running 'Computers for schools' project in this particular school and when I was an intern I used to teach the kids some basics of computers and all the kids in the school pretty much know me.
So, I was there on 11th at 11.45am and I entered the class at exactly 12 in the noon. I will get one hour to interact with the kids. As I entered all the 20 students in the class wished 'Namaste Teacher' with a big smile on their faces. It was indeed a warm welcome for me and also a good start for this new programme. I had planned to teach 'how to make 5 types of cap from a newspaper', which was an idea I got from the website arvindguptatoys.com. By the way, I have to mention here that this website is a storehouse of awesome videos for kids.
I had taken 20 newspapers from hostel and I started distributing them to the kids one by one. As I was distributing the newspapers the kids were all murmuring about the pictures that were printed in their newspaper.

ALL SET TO MAKE THE CAPS !!!

After distributing the newspaper I taught them to make the 'rain cap', then the 'Chefs cap' which the children chose to name it as 'Rani Kirita' (which means 'queen's crown'), then the 'politicians cap', then the 'square cap' and then the 'Graduation cap' but the children choose to name it as 'Lawyers cap'. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

The rain cap

'Kirita'

Politician's cap

Square cap

Lawyer's cap

The kids were really enthusiastic throughout the session and they helped each other whenever someone was left behind. I could notice the care they had for each other !!

Kids with their caps which they had made during the session !!!

After the successful cap making session I divided them into 4 teams and asked each of the team member to make a cap. Each team member is suppose to make a cap different from the other team member. As soon as I told this all the students started fighting trying to decide which cap they will make. Immediately my brain gave an instant solution for the chaos. I assigned a team leader for each team and asked them to make the choice. Somewhere I wanted to develop leadership and team building qualities in the students. 

                     Then it was time for essay writing. I told the kids to write an essay about their village 'Kukkavu' in one sheet. I gave them 20 minutes for this. The kids finished it promptly on time and gave me the sheets. My session got over at 1pm and I had the mid day meal with the teachers of the school. The thing that grabbed my attention was the sight of the children sitting enthusiastically for the mid - day meal. There was a sense of sharing and gratitude in the air. 

                                            End of the day I was happy I could connect with the kids and hold their attention for the entire session. I came back and read the essays of all the kids. I was happy to find out that the kids really loved their village and their school. Each of them gave different interesting points about the village. And you know what.. I am looking forward to the next session and can't wait to meet these kids whose enthusiasm knows no bounds !!

Computers are their New Found Joy !!!

During the last two weeks of my internship, I got the opportunity to put my hands into SELCO's new project 'Computers for Schools'. Intel had developed a specially integrated laptop for kids which can sustain rough handling. SELCO got one such laptop from Intel to experiment on this new project.

Intel's Classroom PC (with Windows 7 OS) that was used for the project 'Computers for Schools'

Meanwhile a DELL INSPIRON 600 (with Windows XP)  in a decent working condition made it's way into the project. Anand sir had donated the laptop for the noble cause. We decided to give the two laptops to a government school in Kukkavu which is 18KM from Ujire.

DELL INSPIRON used for the project

The plan was to just give the laptops to the students of 7th standard and monitor the usage of the laptop by the kids to find their level of understanding and inquisitiveness towards the laptops. The pilot phase began from the day when the laptop was donated to the school (i.e 24/03/2012) in the presence of dignitaries from Rotary Club. As an intern my job was to go the school and give the children basic computer education. We had planned that this 'basic computer education' would include teaching the kids how to use the mouse (right click,left click,scroll bar), keyboard, MS Word, and Paint. Four interns from SELCO (Myself, Kanmani, Anantha and Nithin) and two students from SDMIT college (Amit and Pallavi) were there on 27th at the school, sharp at 2.30pm to meet the kids unaware of the surprise that was awaiting us. We entered the classroom, and all the kids gave us due respect by standing up and wishing us 'good afternoon'. We started the interaction with the kids with the discussion on 'Use of Computers' to find out what they knew about the computers. They were mum for some time and we promised to give chocolates to the those who answer. Slowly one kid stood up and told computers can be used to see another person who is far from us. That stunned us !! A kid who has not seen a laptop ever before knows what is used for. Then we continued with the practical session. We had planned to teach them basic things like how to switch on and off the laptop. To our surprise they had already learnt to switch on and off the laptop. The kids had tried their hands on the computer on the day the laptop was donated to them. That is the level of interest the kids had. Before giving the laptops we had put some educational videos into the it. The surprising part was that the kids had already discovered the videos and somehow found the way to play the videos also. We thought of showing the videos but the kids were far ahead and told us that they have already watched the videos. Then I told myself, "We better come with good content for the next visit. These kids are on a roll."

The super 20 of 7th grade who were the beneficiaries of the laptop.

On 29th two interns went to the schools and taught them to type their names in MS Word. They made sure each of the 20 students got the chance to type their names. They also taught them to color the names they had typed.

Kids using the Intel laptop. Look at the smile on their faces !!

On 3rd, the same team of six reached the school at 3pm. Today we had planned to teach Paint to the kids. So I sat down with 10 of the kids with my notebook to teach them paint in theory before the practicals. To make the session interactive I was asking questions. Before explaining how to save the file in Paint I happened to ask 'How to save the file ?'. And here comes a sharp reply from one of the kids Riyaz who happens to be the class topper, "You click third option SAVE to save the file and then type the name". Wow !! Here I am trying to explain the kids how to use Paint and here is this cool kid who has already explored Paint and also saved the file. Nevertheless I continued to explain and gave them few exercises to do in Paint.

The next visit was on 10th. This time it was only me and Sandeep (one of the employee's at SELCO). I acquainted them with the basics of MS Word. I taught them to make a table and gave them a homework of preparing a table which has the names of the students in the class along with their contact number. The next day,that is, 11th was the last day for the school and also the end of the first phase of our project. We had planned to bring back the laptops to SELCO LABS. On the last day, the kids showed me the assignment. The same day the final examination results were out. They had created a table with names of the students along with the marks obtained by them in each subject. That is the level of creativity these kids have. I was so delighted. A teacher is always on cloud nine when her kids are creative.

This painting was done by Abuthwayar (in the right). Though his fingers were impaired he was using the laptop comfortably.

A bit of gaming !!!

The last day I interviewed all the kids and they were of the opinion that they love the laptops and wished that the high school also has laptops/computers. They loved working on the Intel laptop compared to the other laptop.

These were the things they learnt in just 2 weeks. The computers will be useful to these kids in a long run. The second phase of the project will begin from June. The second phase will be 'Computer Enhanced Education', that is,using computers to enhance the quality of teaching. The teacher can use the computer to teach the existing subjects.

In the first phase we had given two laptops to only 7th standard students. The second phase will require more laptops. If you have a laptop in decent working condition which you can donate for this noble cause, then do get in touch with me. The kids will be more than thankful for your gift!!

Minutes Software

Finally I thought I would do some justice to my IT engineering degree and blog about the software I am working on for 2-months, at SELCO. When I entered SELCO, I was given a range of IS related projects that I should be working on. My first day as an intern was obviously shocking as I enter the organization and found out that I need to work on so many projects (and all related to IT !!Oh No!!). It is indeed horrifying for an engineering graduate who never got inspired to do any coding in her college days. Well, it's unfair to say that I didn't enjoy coding at all. I did enjoy few lab sessions, working on few programs/projects in Java and Android. Coming to SELCO, seeing the list of projects was like watching a horror movie. But then slowly as you start working, you know which project is doable and which projects take time and hence not feasible as a project for your internship. Slowly our work flow shifted towards the project 'Minutes Software'. The initial confusion we had was what language to use. First we tried out Macros. But few functionalities were not feasible using macros and found out it is a cumbersome language to work on. Then we started working on Android, but then realized it's not feasible for a 'Minutes Software'. We were back to square one, still figuring out what language to work on. Let me tell you all these things took one month. 

                                 Finally an engineering student from this college, who has finished his diploma and had some work experience came to our rescue. He told us that VB.NET would be the best language to work on for  this project. He also had some modules with the initial design framework which suited our project requirements. So, this finally channelized our efforts in the right direction because we knew we where developing the software with the right language. 

Now our project is done and ready for delivery !! Well Minutes Software is a productivity tool that SELCO can use to record their weekly meetings. SELCO currently uses word file to record the meetings . There is no problem with the existing system but a lot of time is wasted in preparing the document for the next meeting. It's a waste of time for Anand sir to edit the document every week for the meeting. So here comes 'Minutes Software' to the rescue. The software gives the format for every meeting. It will also hold the database which will store the discussions of every meeting. It also sends notifications of the action plan to all the employees through email and SMS. 

                               The best learning happened during the process of  development of the software. We were the system analysts. I sat down as a minutes recorder for every meeting. I understood that though editing the document is a job that seems simple, it does take away your time and energy. Attending the meeting not only made me feel the difficulties of a recorder, but also helped me in getting a better understanding of all the projects that SELCO is working on. I also understood where I lack my skills as an IT engineer. Though I could add on various functionalities for the project, I needed someone's help in getting the design started. The initial designing phase is what I am not good at and I need to work on. I enjoyed working on the 'Minutes Software' and what makes me happy is the fact that this software will make the work life of people at SELCO much easier !!!

The Art Of Motivating People !!!

Selco Labs, Ujire is in 4th floor of SDMIT college. Though I am not a student of this college, I am literally living a college life here; interacting with students, having fun attending their hostel day, DJ night etc etc. It's full on masti. But it's not just fun here with the college students. Recently I had gone to Mrs Divya Mahendran, the one in-charge of placement activities and expressed my desire to give a presentation on Jagriti Yatra to the students of the college to give them some exposure on the event and motivate them to go on the Yatra and to also to enlighten them on few exceptional personalities who are doing few exceptional things in their life. According to the plan I was to do the presentation in each class everyday with her. But somehow it didn't work out and one fine evening I was in Selco Labs and I was suddenly called for the presentation. I went with my laptop to give the talk to a crowd of 100 students. Well this was my first talk on Jagriti Yatra and Twenty19; and an intended motivational talk. As I started my presentation with enthusiasm, there was pin drop silence and students were keenly listening to me from start to the end. I could make out that they enjoyed my presentation from their reaction. I was appreciated by students and madam for a half an hour talk which did motivate few students who came up to me and registered for Jagriti Yatra. I was happy with myself as I was able to give back to Jagriti Yatra and Twenty19 in which ever way that was possible for me.

                                                I am interning under Mr. Anand Narayan in Selco Labs, who was kind enough to put me in contact with a professor at SDM arts college to help me give the same talk to arts students. I went with the same enthusiasm to motivate as many as possible. I was treated like a Chief Guest at the college. I was humbled by their respect and love. I was suppose to address the NSS students of the college. Nearly 60 students had gathered and I started the presentation with a hitch as the computer had virus and it was giving me problems with the presentation. There was a chaos in the crowd. Few were talking and that really got me irritated. I asked those who are not interested to leave. I did maintain my calm and gained back the momentum to continue with the talk. But as I was talking few were dozing right in front of me, few were pretending to listen and few were indeed listening. As I went through the presentation I realized that there is something missing. Why am I not able to connect with them - Is it the fact that I was not conversing in kannada that didn't allow me to connect with them, or is it that the students had exams and they were not interested in my talk??? As I head back to Selco Labs,  I keep pondering what is it that didn't let me connect to them - was it the mere circumstances of that particular day or was it the way I was handling it. But I did learn few things from the talk - how to keep your clam even when people seem uninterested while you make your best efforts to make it as interesting as possible and that every crowd will need a different approach for their motivation. Oh wait - This what I learnt in my 7th semester 'Management - Principles and Practices' ? It's just that it was in theory and now I did the practicals !!!

LFE lamps -THE SUPERHERO of every CHILD !!!

If anyone of us living in fast-moving, posh, well electrified cities of India were shown a solar powered study lamp and asked "what do you think this lamp could do?"; not many will bother to answer it. Oh forget it ! Few won't even bother to look at it. Well show the lamp and ask the same question to a child who lives in a remote, un-electrified region of India, his face would light up immediately and will not only give you the list of changes that it would bring in his life but also eagerly wait for you to give the lamp to him. Thats exactly what SELCO does under it's project "LIGHTS FOR EDUCATION"- providing solar powered lamps to rural children who are either un-electrified or are victims of erratic power supply. You know what's the most innovative part of the project ? Well, the children have to come to school to use lights at home. Now one question in mind is why come to school to use the lights at home? Simple, the school will have a centralized charger and the students would take the battery to the school and get the batteries charged for the entire day in the charging station while they happily attend the classes. And when they return home, they take their batteries along and connect it to the lamp. The lamps are designed keeping in mind the young users. The design is so simple. There is no pain of removing the batteries from the battery cover. All they need to do is remove the battery attached to the connector by just plucking it off from the connector. And when they are back from the school they connect the battery to the connector, the lamp glows and there goes the darkness !!!

LFE lamp with the connector, and the battery

The centralized charging station at a school 

       As an intern at Selco Labs, Ujire, I got an opportunity to be a part of impact assessment of "LIGHTS FOR EDUCATION (LFE) ". The lights prove to be every child's SUPERHERO. The superhero not only gives lights to the beneficiaries for their studies, but also helps mom for cooking and also dad with his work, especially in un-electrified area where there is no other source of light. The SUPERHERO has overthrown the evil kerosene lamps which didn't provide much light and also gave health problems. The LFE lamps are keeping the teachers also happy as they find that the attendance level has increased because the children have to come to school to charge their batteries. They say that the children are much regular with their home-works.

A Child studying under LFE lamp

                             Isn't that great- a humble lamp makes a child's life much brighter and brings so much happiness !!!

A Refreshing Trek !!!

What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear trekking ? Beautiful mountains, lush green forests, tough climbs ??? Exactly!! thats what we got when we went for trekking in Western Ghats on 9 Feb 2012. We trekked to Bandaje Falls which is 700 meters above and which took three and half hour of climbing the mountain. When it comes to SELCO Ujire, they have awesome people who are enthusiastic enough to take an off from their daily schedule and ready to climb the hills which looks really gigantic from below. They are so warm and affectionate that they included me and and my friend who are interns and hardly been 3 weeks here at Selco.
     Never thought trekking can give an insight into YOU - what you are, to what extent you can go physically, how much energy you have. I say that because when you start walking into the jungle, and start climbing up the hill you find the way up is really difficult. There are rocks and the angle of climbing is always 20-30 degrees. There is so much pressure on the thigh muscles and you just can't afford to stop. You need to keep moving. There are times when you want to stop and sit,but you can't because you just have one day and you need to get to the top of the hill, and return before the dusk. Its about your mental strength also, how much determined are you to climb up, how much focussed you are, how much desire you have in you to climb up that it shadows the pain you have in your legs. Once you reach the top, you have a breathtaking view. You just turn around and the shear beauty of the mountains around you, the breath of fresh air will make you forget the damn pain in your legs. All you feel is the happiness inside you and a sense of achievement.  Another adventure was near the Bandaje Falls- standing in the edge of the cliff and looking down. What a adrenaline rush it is!! You see the steep fall and you get the thrill in your heart beat.
                         The way down is what that ultimately makes you realize how high you had climbed. You stop  after you reach down and just look back and its so hard to digest the fact that you climbed so high. You pat yourself for the achievement !!!
THE BEST PART WAS RETURNING BACK TO OFFICE THE NEXT DAY AND FINDING THE SAME ENERGY AND ENTHUSIASM OF THE PEOPLE AT SELCO !!!!