To what extent can we help children, without bringing in our subjectivity of good and bad? The main challenge here is neither commitment nor capability of people, but the sustainability of the project and the perseverance required to strike at the factors of signification.
I feel it is futile to attempt interventions without comprehending the perceptions and aspirations of children and their families. We need to ensure that our attempt doesn’t produce any unwonted outcome. Moreover, what is that minimum required amount of time to comprehend? How to strike the balance???
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7 comments:
We could endlessly go on trying to understand the aspirations of the children and still not be able to comprehend. Every condition is unique, so is the set of language the person in that condition uses.
To demonstrate: A person in the slum might ask you to help him get his son/daughter a job. Doesnt mean he doesnt want his son to be an IAS. Just that IAS doesnt exist in his cognizance, in turn his language.
If our endeavour at understanding their aspirations is because we think they reserve a right of self determination as to which proffession they want to end up in, it shall become binding on us to at least introduce them to the myriad options that are available around them first. We also will have to make sure to keep their parent's subjectivity out of the choice. which i doubt would be possible.
The question of good or bad is very relative one.
But we need to ask right question.The objective clarity of any campaign is utmost
important.What is the expected result of the campaign in the end.Like if it is just another literacy campaign then ur student should be literate in real sense not in govt sense at the end of the programme.Or if the programme is about disbursing vocational education then the candidate should possess the adequate skills
to fetch him the job.This is required to guage the impact of the campaign.
I agree with Praveen in the sense that adressing the aspiration of the children or the end user would help us in bridging that gap in a better manner.It should not be like other formality campaign run for mere formality.Otherwise there are other good programs going on with better logistics like Teach India
programme of Times of India group that are really making the difference.
But best of the wishes from my end.
- Abhishek (30058)
I think the process begins with us first learning and understanding the children.
Results should not be evaluated with tangible goals such as the no. of children who get A grades in school are able to get a job but by our own evaluation about the no. of lives we have changed!
and the change is possible in such myriad ways...
Anshuman (30004)
@ Anshuman
when can u say that u have changed the life through the intervention u r doing ??....speaking qualitatively wont make much difference as everyone has the own perspective of evaluating the outcome so better to go with concrete measures and tangible measures to evaluate the progress.
But doesn't having intangible goals push you to do better & better??
as in... if i set my goals at changing lives of 10 children, i ll not just be satisfied by providing them with a job but would try and find ways to make their lives better!
Having tangible goals in corporates is a must...is it the same for developmental programs as well?
-30004
Exactly Anshuman now u have asked the right question in the context.Well Corporates objective is to maximize profit so every effort is in the direction of maximizing profit which requires closely monitoring the results of the decision taken.If it works it is welcomed across the organization and if it doesn't they just throw it in dustbin.Here is the catch that usually the Government policies and other organizations efforts misses this aspect at grass root as they just measure what impact is created but against what parameters or goals or metrics they measure is not clear or questionable so u always end up being politically correct while evaluating the impact qualitatively.So better we change our approach and look towards new perspective of measuring impact against predefined set of quantifiable metrics
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