From the Managing Committee

The past few months at CHIP have been very exciting, with some big programmes being established over the next year. Since 2004 CHIP has been establishing strong roots in the school and community with growth focused on a single vision of providing uncompromising quality education. We can’t do this alone however, to achieve this vision CHIP has been and will continue to bring together the best of other NGOs, stakeholder groups, the public sector and the community. The current quality of education is unacceptable, a change is necessary. We at CHIP believe through change in the quality of education possibilities become infinite.
In order to achieve this CHIP has been expanding and we are happy to welcome our new Project Manager, Novela Corda, to the team. Novela joins us from the Don Bosco Shelter’s research team. Her passion and drive to bring about social

change is unparalleled; we are all thrilled by her motivation and passion. We hope you will be as excited as we are about the changes that she will bring to this organization. We would also like to thank Mary Ellen Matsui, our Atma volunteer over the last few months, for her contribution. Mary Ellen will be leaving at the end of this month. We wish her all success in her future ventures.
Believing in CHIP’s abilities many other’s have contributed to CHIP’s projects becoming “Friends of CHIP”. We have been inspired by many generous spirits but especially by two individuals. The first is Ms. Surekha Misra of Darmstadt, Germany. On her 50th birthday Ms. Misra decided to share her day with the less fortunate in this world. She asked friends to contribution to NGOs in India, including CHIP, rather than giving gifts. These “birthday gifts” have gone to establishing our balwadi, remedial class, and a study class at Prateeksha Nagar school. Our second inspiration has comes from young Juhi Shah, a high school student from the US. Juhi has been making craft items for sale and donating the proceeds back to CHIP’s programmes. It has been overwhelming to see such generosity and motivating to know that people believe in our cause and our work. We are so glad that we can count these people, and the many other contributors as friends of CHIP.
If you to wish to become a friend of CHIP please feel free to contact our office and speak with Novela. In the coming months we will be launching our monthly giving programme, so be sure to watch for that; as well we have our Mumbai Marathon team coming soon- a small but mighty- marathon madness team. We are now raising funds to support our runners please contact us to contribute.

Wishing you all the best,
Anjali Mirchandani
CHIP Mumbai

Chip In...

Contribute to our Marathon Team!
This year CHIP has a team of true marathoners competing in the half and full marathons. Our small team is making a big effort to raise funds. So please contribute and join our cheer leading team for the marathon madness!

CHIP Monthly Giving Programme
CHIP is launching out monthly giving programme this month and looking to build the number of friends we have. Please stay tuned for more, or contact us to contribute.

Donations
Laptops– laptop computers keep our office functioning and able to go where our projects require. Recyclables which can be converted into educational materials in our Balwadi. Cardboard, one side used paper, plastics, toys etc.

Volunteer!
Please contact us if you are interested.

Balwadi at Prateeksha Nagar:

Until this academic year Prateeksha Nagar school had never had a place for pre-school children. Starting small CHIP began this a balwadi with the hiring of a local woman, as a teacher, and the enrollment of approximately 30 children.
September 18th will be the official opening of the Balwadi, though it has been running since June. We have created a space in the school’s covered shed for the class; where new concrete flooring, curtains (painted by our peer leaders), and colourful tires & stones demarcate the classroom area.
To ensure the best possible teaching inputs we visited many exposure visits to leading schools in the area. We were very impressed by the model used in Udayachal, Godrej school’s pre-primary section at Vikhroli. Their child centric approach and use of recycled materials as learning tools has inspired CHIP’s balwadi’s style and curriculum formation.

K West Balwadi Teacher Exposure Visit

We wanted to pass this inspiration along to the other BMC balwadis. Working with the help of K-West CDO Mrs. Pravina Patel we were able to bring 30 BMC balwadi teachers to the Godrej school for an exposure visit. The teachers participated in the classes and then received instructions in the preparation of educational items from recycled materials. Everyone who participated in the day was newly motivated to bring new ideas and concepts to their work.
To further the use of this curriculum in our own balwadi we have requested the assistance of “veteran” educator Yasmeen Shroff. Yasmeen is a former teacher from Godrej school, and currently runs a programme Possibilities with her husband Aspi Shroff that works with young people to help them uncover their potential. Yasmeen will help us and Salma, our teacher, to fully utilize their potential through in classroom guidance and training. Yasmeen will also provide input on how to develop our education material collection from recycled goods.

We are working now to collect recyclable materials for the school from our own homes, friends of CHIP, family, and the school community, especially the parents of the balwadi children. In doing this we hope the parents and school community will become more involved in the learning happening in the school. Reusing everyday items for a new function also shows parents and students that though they may come from a disadvantaged background everything they require is within their grasp with the use of a little creative thinking.
We at CHIP have already experienced a mild paradigm shift with regards to what we can truly call waste and what is really a puzzle or counting sheet or a building block waiting to be discovered.
As well as being a learning centre for children, the balwadi will act as an early detection centre for learning disabilities, slow learning, mal nutrition or any other physical disabilities. We will be monitoring the health of the children carefully, doing evaluation and counseling when issues are discovered.
We are very excited about this project. We now have the chance to address the needs of children at an even earlier stage and instill in them values, skills and ensure good health so later on in life they are able to meet their potential-happy, healthy and ready for a challenge.
Please contact us if you would like to contribute to our recycled goods. We will be publishing a full list shortly.

Our Peer Leaders

Prateeksha Nagar school is blessed to have four former students of the school, now in 6th standard, who act as Peer Leaders. Salman, Nazeer, Saif and Shahid are all in 6th standard at Oshiwara school.
Selected by Magic Bus in fourth standard, these boys come nearly everyday after school to assist CHIP and Magic Bus with programmes. The boys lead songs and games, perform educational plays and playing a large role in assisting CHIP’s programmes.
Since becoming peer leaders these boys have improved their attendance and their studies all scoring above 80% on final exams. To ensure their even further success in life we are now providing school and career guidance. So they are able to achieve their dreams.

CHIP is happy to announce that nine girls expressing interest in becoming peer leaders in the school. They will be the first girls to become Peer Leaders with CHIP. Peer leadership in Prateeksha Nagar school is essential to the programmes development. This is why CHIP is committed to making Prateeeksha Nagar School a tenth standard school. In this way peer leadership will be able to expand more organically.

CHIP Monsoon Season Update:

June:
• Novela Corda joins CHIP from Don Bosco Shelter, research department to be CHIPs project manager. Novela’s hiring, marks a milestone for CHIP, as she becomes CHIP’s second fulltime staff member. Novela’s knowledge and passion for the project is sure to bring CHIP.
• Balwadi class is formed, about 30 children are enrolled and community woman Salma is hired as teacher.

July:
• CHIP team visits Muktangan school to view their Balwadi model and teacher training facilities. CHIP will eventually sending a teacher there to learn their model and English teaching.
• Mary Ellen from Canada joins as our first Atma volunteer. She is working on HR and marketing related items.
• The CHIP team visits Udayachal the Godrej school at Vikhroli. We are briefed in their model of education and their approach with the children. Udayachal is now the model we wish our Balwadi to follow.
• CHIP team visits the Hope school in Andheri to see their remedial education programme.
• Archita from partner École Mondial ran a two week art camp for the children for students in fourth standard.
• Juhi Shah visits and helps in classrooms
• The CHIP team joins Atma and the Errasmus University team for a day of brainstorming and idea sharing.

August:
• Independence Day, though rainy, was a day of smiles and showing your pride in your nation. The national anthem was sung, a children’s choir lead everyone in song, the peer leaders performed a hilarious vignette on good hygiene and snacks were had by all.
• This month CHIP and peer leaders met with local young professionals to discuss careers and how to get from grade school to the job of your choice. Everyone had a great time discussing and sharing.
• To gain more information on remedial education and dealing with children with learning disabilities CHIP visited the Child Reach school in Santa Cruz. They were very welcoming to us and have offered to help us assess children and in training teachers. We are looking forward to a great relationship with Child Reach.

• CHIP and Magic Bus host parents meeting at school to introduce them
• The CHIP team had a very fruitful visit with Impact India, where they briefed us in their own in school health monitoring programme and exactly how to implement the system for our own school. The system, which is run entirely by students has shown strong results. We look forward to implementing this at Prateeksha Nagar.

Thoughts on Education

CHIP Contributing Editors: Mary Ellen Matsui & Novela Corda
CHIP’s vision is to promote and provide quality education through continuous partnership with people and organizations of all shapes and sizes. This would involve bringing together the best from every area including the public sector.
So often in NGO work, the public sector is considered a parallel impermeable system causing NGO and GOs to work in isolation. Unfortunately this habit is fatal to the system. The public system then becomes dependant on the NGO sector to support necessary public services.
Recent discussion in development proffer the solution that NGOs should work with smaller reach and greater depth and include a great amount of collaboration, striving for quality rather than quantity. CHIP’s objective with Prateeksha Nagar school is just this: to create a model of quality

education. The model is striving to be a collaborative effort, which takes advantage of all available government schemes in education and the best most innovative programmes from the development sector.
CHIP is striving to be at the helm of innovation through collaboration providing the best possible environment for the students of Prateeksha Nagar School. It is our deepest wish that this collaboration will be duplicated in other schools by ourselves or other organizations– giving each child the best possible chance at the future.

Special Thanks to:

Juhi Shah: For two weeks Juhi Shah, an American high school student of Indian origin and founder of Ruya foundation, volunteered her time to help teach students at Prateeksha Nagar school. In her free time Juhi makes goods and sells them to raise funds for the needy and has chosen CHIP as a means for distributing these funds.
Sonia: Juhi’s Aunt, Ms. Sonia generously gifted us several sets of beautiful costumes from her own playschool “Just Kids”. These costumes will add glitz and glamour to the children’s plays. Sonia has also extended her support in developing the teaching at the school.
Surekha Misra: Ms. Misra has collected a large contribution for her birthday which will go to the development of our study programme, remedial classes and balwadi. This generous donation will help initiate these programmes and will carry them over the next year.
Atma Mumbai: Thank you to Atma Mumbai for their excellent foresight which has manifested itself this month as a hard drive to back up all of our laptops.
Andreas Schneider & Catarina Longman: The CHIP office is now complete with the donation of a printer by Andreas Schneider and Catarina Longman. We are very thankful for this generous donation– expect more paper work in future!
Amla: We are thankful to Amla a loyal CHIP patron for her inputs and help at Prateeksha Nagar where she has been leading the children in drama classes. Her efforts resulted in an excellent production by the peer leaders at our Independence Day celebrations and again at their school, Oshiwara School.
AJ, Arun and Daley: AJ Alva, Arun Alva and Daley Gonsalves for their help and advice during our career planning snack session at Prithvi Café.
Arun and Punit: Arun for all your help and advice in developing the website, your creative thinking is always appreciated and your commitment helps to motivate us. We would also like to thank Punit and team for giving CHIP Mumbai it’s own website.
Rina : Ms. Rina’s support has been vital to the formulation of the remedial education programme. Her insight and experience has helped us intiated this much needed and innovative project that aims at improving the functional literacy of the students She has also been instrumental in helping CHIP build networks with other NGOs and individuals working in the area of special education.

Chip Partners

Address:
CHIP Mumbai
c/o Shobhna Desai Productions Pvt. Ltd.
A-401, 402, 403 "Kotia Nirman" Plot No. 2,
Shah Industrial Estates
Opposite Laxmi Industrial Estate
Andheri West, Mumbai 400053
Phone : 99 3012 2986

NEW WEBSITE COMING SOON:
www.chipmumbai.org

Email ID:
chip.mumbai@gmail.com

CHIP is 80G certified and will issue receipts for all monetary contributions.