DECEMBER 2021
The Rural Changemaker
OUT-OF-THE-BOX!
Let’s go!
Published by The Rural Changemakers e.V. www.rural-changemakers.com hello@rural-changemakers.com
Jalsa Bai, Kamla Gon and Siya Bai received their passports! They are very curious to explore Germany. A picture says more than 1000 words!
If you want to support our activities in Janwaar please donate to: The Rural Changemakers gem. e.V. · Vereinsregister Berlin Amtsgericht Charlottenburg VR 36642 B · Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin · St.-Nr. 27/678/57308 Berliner Sparkasse · IBAN: DE44 1005 0000 0190 7388 98 · BIC: BELADEBEXXX · Paypal: hello@rural-changemakers.com
DECEMBER 2021
Our Kitchen Garden is Flourishing It’s a pure joy to see our kitchen garden flourishing! It’s a real process of cooperation and co-creation. Prem Singh, who developed his own way of organic farming, adivsed us. Pappu and Kamla Gond made it happen in their daily work and now the older Yadav boys are watering the garden.
With the harvest we can feed the older, lonely women twice a week. We’ve expanded the kitchen garden, it is now more than double the size and we’ve planted 30 more trees. Now we have more than 100 trees around the skatepark!
Pappu (left), Ajeet and Arjun (right) are planting new vegetables.
The lush, green kitchen garden!
Kamla Gond distributing the harvest. Credit for all photos: Anil and Arun Kumar
DECEMBER 2021
Shoes, Shoes, Shoes! The kids are known as the Barefoot Skateboarders – but over he last two months 250 pairs of shoes arrived in Janwaar. Sport shoes, rain boots, sandals …. They were sponsored by three different sources: the first batch arrived from the WARRIOR Shanghai, Amsterdam, Netherlands. My son, Tim arranged this. The second batch arrived from Berlin, Germany. Maria Pelzer, a friend of our Berlin-based charity had collected more than 120 pairs of shoes, mainly in small sizes and really cute looks !!!
Durgha is happy!
And finally the third batch came as a CSR gift from Bounce Biscuits – all skateboarding shoes from Decathlon.
Little Satyam goes pink!
All photos by Anil and Arun Kumar.
Anil is giving the Shanghai Warriors shoes to some older village men.
Sandeep is happy!
Just gorgeous the girls!
DECEMBER 2021
Diwali 2021 Diwali is a post-harvest festival celebrating the bounty following the arrival of the monsoon in the subcontinent. It is is the festival of lights and one of the major festivals celebrated in India. Every family will clean their house and paint it anew before the festival. This year it was the first time our kids took care of the cleaning / painting of the inside of Villa Janwaar, our community center, while the ladies did the outside area with fresh mud. Everything was done before the lights went up! Gond Art by Kamla Gond (left) and Jalsa Bai
All photos by Anil and Arun Kumar.
The kids celebrating Diwali in the garden of the Villa.
Anil (left) and Selen painting the room upstairs .
DECEMBER 2021
TRC_120 decks arrived in Janwaar The kids were so happy to see themselves on the boards – and they are very proud to have The Rural Changemaker’s deck. And so are we. This was a great cooperation with Decathlon Skateboarding and Matjaž Tančič, the photographer. You can order them in the Decathlon online store or drop us a message at hello@rural-changemakers.com For each board sold our charity will get 5 Euros from Decathlon! Here is what some customers said: “Wow, they are beautiful. I feel like ordering more to give close friends as Xmas gift or something.” ;-)😍 (Avneet Sharma, Estonia) “Amazing ;-). So happy :-)”. (Nitesh from Delhi)
All photos by Anil and Arun Kumar.
DECEMBER 2021
Madhya Pradesh Skateboarding Championships The first weekend in November the qualifications for the Indian National Skateboarding Championship took place in Janwaar. They were at the same time the Madhya Pradesh Championships. It was a gold rush for the Janwaar kids ... From what I heard all the gold medals went to Janwaar, and many silver and bronze medals as well. Only two medals went to kids from other areas. The young kids as well as the older succeeded. They are the backbone of the MP skateboarding scene – only a few other kids form Indore participated. It’s always fun to realize that in this village in rural India every kid knows what skateboarding is and can easily stand on a board. I guess there is no other spot on this planet where the density of squaremeter skatepark / villager is as high as in Janwaar. We have 1500 squaremeters skatepark and roughly 1200 people. The kids never had a skateboarding trainer or a coach – they always do it all togeher. Kids teaching kids. And the spirits are flying high for the national championships in December. Congratz to all our kids!.
All photos by Anil and Arun Kumar.
DECEMBER 2021
Online-Schooling Since May 2020 we have regular online sessions for all of our kids – they support their activities at school but also touch areas which aren’t part of the regular school curriculum. We offer sessions in Hindi, spoken English, creative sketching and karate for girls – and skateboarding math. The kids love these sessions and attend regularly – besides helping at home AND going to the local government school. It has become part of their daily lives. Asha Gond and Anil Kumar are supervising this and every two weeks Anil is sending a brief status update. Here is one of his updates: English: The kids have been attending sessions and they are progressing well. Their teacher asks the kids to revise everything that they have learnt such as names of vegetables, animals, cities, gadgets, vehicles etc. All the kids get a chance to revise a topic and speak out loud the names and other kids follow him/her. Then their teacher teaches new things after revision of the topic that they have learnt. Hindi: The kids have improved their Hindi and they are able to read it. They
teacher explains to them. Their teacher explains each and every part of the drawing and then asks the kids to do the same. She also asks to show them the drawing in between the process. Karate: Panchwati, Priyanka, Brajesh, Poorti, Sachin are learning well. They have learnt so many kicks and punches as well. They always revise whatever they did in the last class and then they begin to learn new things. Their teacher explains each and every part and then the kids follow her. They all help each other and learn together. Whoever does something in the wrong way then their teacher asks him / her to do it in front of the screen and show him/her the correct way of doing the same.
Online-sessions at Villa Janwaar.
have started reading a paragraph and then they solve its questions. The younger kids Neha, Lavkush, Raj etc. have started learning small words. They also create words with two letters. Didi explains them until they understand the topic. The elder kids like Priyanka, Panchwati, Poorti, Vinay, Sachin, Brajesh have also learned tenses.
They create simple past, present and future sentences. Painting: They are enjoying this session and they draw one new thing in every session. They are learning it well and Sachin, Panchwati, Poorti, Priyanka are learning it well. They all follow the instructions and then draw as their
Computers: Kids are now able to run the computer by themselves and they play various games on the computer. We revised how to install any applications, how to open mail, doc and excel. Shailendra was also attending these classes as he had an interest in learning computers.