FOG has also a unit which provides psycho-social support for villagers living in Seenigama and around. See following link for detailled information. On Saturday a leadership seminar for youngsters was held at the premises of the foundation. A week before Fazana Ibrahim, the head of psycho-social unit, asked me whether I would like to conduct a Yoga lesson for the participants of the workshop. I agreed and asked for her support during the lesson to translate from English to Sinhala in case my Sinhala should abandon me.... (most of the kids were not able to understand English).
Saturday 9:00am I started the course. 25 kids were present at this morning and they may wondered about what they will going to face during the next hour....
Starting the yoga class
Me and Fazana demonstrating the downward facing dog
Kids practising the downward facing dog
Kids completing a sun salutation
Demonstrating the cobra
Kids practising the cobra
Preparing for Trikonasana
Tree posture
streeeeeetching the leg....
The hardest part :-)
Finishing the class
I conducted a very basic Yoga course because there were only beginners attending the course. Most of them never heard of Yoga which is quite strange as Yoga has been developed not far away from here, in India. Anyway, we practiced a lot of sun salutations and some easy yoga postures afterwards. The kids were quite flexible (must be the genes :-)). After about one hour the lesson was over and the kids were fit to jump into the leadership workshop.
Unfortunately I was not able to follow what the kids were doing afterwards in the workshop. There were 3 teachers with different approaches. I have selected some pics in the following where one can get an impression of the following leadership workshop (team-building exercises and other games, presentation mode, etc.). It must have been great fun!
Presentation
Teamwork
Artwork
What the hell is that? Looks like a weird Voodoo game
Presentation of team work?
Final discussion
Practising yoga with the kids was really fun although the language is a challenge for me as my Sinhala is still not good enough to explain everything in necessary the grade of detail. But it's getting better the longer I'm here, I already learnt a lot from Fazana's Sinhala translations. What I really like is that Yoga unfolds it's effect immediately while you are practising it. Unlike IT-trainings were you get the benefit only after several lessons. Therefore the kids really enjoyed their first yoga class.
I'm looking forward to conduct two additionaly weekly yoga classes for the kids swimming and cricket team of the foundation. The classes will start next week.....
A friend in Germany just donated some money for my project. I am very happy as this happens at the right time. With this money I bought a multimedia projector in Germany which my friend Alex brought to Sri Lanka. This projector will help me during the weekly lessons for the teachers as it is a lot easier to teach in a presentation mode than having to write everything onto the black board (as you can see on the following pic).
My first lesson with the new beamer. What a difference...
I already used the beamer in the last lesson on Thursday but today at the school's assembly I officially donated the projector to the school during the assembly. I was impressed that school starts always with a 20min assembly event where all teachers, students and the principal are present. It has quite a ceremonial touch as you can see in the following videos:
So today me and Alex were present at this event. After performing some rituals and singing the national anthem the principal spoke to the audience. He introduced me and explained what I'm doing here at the school during my 3 months stay. Then he asked me to come and say some words to the audience... Ups.... I didn't expect to speak to the audience so I was a bit exited when I entered the 'stage'. My audition was completely freestyle but I think it went ok as I got a big applause :-). May be I was the first 'foreigner' who gave a speech at their assembly!
Me live on stage....
Note from Nov. 4th:
Yesterday I had a good coaching session with the teachers. This time in the computer room together with the new multimedia projector (last time we had to use the chemistry laboratory due to missing keys for the computer room).
The white thing on the left is the project, my notebook on the right side
Sorry, not a perfect picture but at least the teachers are on it :-)
The lessons are now much more effective with the new multimedia projector. This device can be even used together with a DVD player. It also has sound output. This is ideal for showing films or learn DVDs during school lessons. What a great benefit for the school!
Thank you Sigrid for the donation. As you can see in this post, you did a very good thing to the people here!
I'm so glad that I found the Yoga studio Kailash in Hikkaduwa. It is located on the roof of the very nice Kailash hotel and the owner Lyndon Mason is having a yoga class every morning.
Kailash Hotel + Yoga studio as seen from the main street
Entrance way
Appartments and the yoga studio on top of the building (Lyndon is already waving with his hands :-))
Now I'm able to learn and improve my own yoga practice. Lyndon is a very skilled yogi and is having a relaxed and humorous way of teaching shivananda yoga (Vishnu Devananda style). And I learnd already a lot in the past 3 lessons!
See here 2 video snapshots from Lyndon's yoga practise....
Note from Dec. 11th:
After weeks of practice the scorpion pose feels not so difficult :-). It's has not the beauty and elegance as Lyndon's scorpion pose but at least it's a start....
On Saturday the Foundation of Goodness hosted the graduation ceremony of all the IT-courses (IT-Basics, graphic design, web design & programming) in the current 4 month batch. This was an ideal occasion to bring in some of the donations I received in Germany from the several donors. So I proposed in advance to donate 40 USB pen-drives of the equipment I received in Germany before I came to SL.
The graduation was celebrated very nicely. One high public officer of the department of education was invited as special guest and attended the ceremony as well as all the relevant functional and executive staff of the foundation. After speeches of the public officer and Sampath Viraj Prasanjana (the general manager of the foundation) some working examples of the students were presented to the audience. It was great to see the creativeness of the students showing up e.g handmade websites using well-established open source tools. So I was happy to hand over the usb pen-drives to the students after the presentations. See in following some pics:
Me handing over the usb pen-drives
Happy student with donated pen-drive :-)
Here also some videos:
This was a real nice event and I was really impressed about the skills and the talents of the students. At last the obligatory pic with all the attendees :-)
proud students + foundation staff + special guests
Hey, just by the way. I found this youtube vido by chance today. Have look at this video showing the founder Kushil Gunasekara explaining how the foundation was built up...
My second coaching session for the teachers in Gintota was quite a challenge for me. It was the second class with a group of 10 teachers and and we reviewed first the learnings of the last lesson. So far this was ok. But then I proceeded with a theory part which focused on binary computer language. After a few minutes nobody was concentrating anymore on the lesson and some started to complain that this lesson is not very useful for them.... Okay this did not work really..... Why the hell did I start with this boring binary stuff? It was obvious that nobody will like this topic. My students are school teachers and not computer nerds.... Actually the purpose was to emphasize that computers do not "think" in our
language but use a binary system instead to calculate and process all information. We experience human readable texts, pictures, videos and sounds but in reality all is just formed by bits and bytes. This is an important thing to know I
thought, particularly because many computer basics are derived from
this fact (bit, byte, ascii, ....). But the teachers were not so
convinced about the importance of this fact....
The classroom where the teachers are coached during the theory parts of the lessons
Anyway, I explained the background again and promised that I will not
touch again on this topic in future lessons. This seem to help :-). Everybody calmed down again. I explained how to work with Windows (Desktop screen, Start programs, minimise/restore/exit programs, etc.) by demonstrating the functions of Windows 7 with my own computer. Unfortunately the school does not have a project to beam the screen onto the wall so I used the built-in magnifier program of Windows so that everybody could see what I was demonstrating with my laptop. After further 15min I closed this part as well and we moved to the computer room where I asked them to do some practical typing exercises. This was really great fun for them and I think everyone enjoyed to exercise the typing program until the end of the 2 hour lesson. I think you can examine this in the following short video:
I also learned something from this lesson. Preparing a lesson for hours in advance is not as important as beeing flexible in your teaching and sensing the needs of your students during the lesson.
I was in Colombo the last days to extend my visa and visit also the Foundation's office in Colombo. When travelling back I passed the Colombo Pettah market next to the main bus station.
Watch me walking through this market, luckily it was not that crowded:
Amazing you get there so many different vegetables and fruits. Many of them not available or even known in Europe.
I had some interesting encounters when I really did not expect them....
Water Monitor in a river
After my last coaching session for the teachers in Gintota school I wanted to check a yoga hotel in the nearby village Dodanduwa (House of Lotus). So I got out of the bus somewhere near to that and walked the last meters. When crossing a bridge I saw this:
Bats in the evening
Every evening a spectacle takes place which is rarely considered by the natives but really astonishing for people who are not living here. Just in the twilight before it gets dark huge birds are filling the sky. Äh... one moment... - I thought the first time when I looked up - these are not birdes, these are giant bats! Sometimes I could see 30 or 40 of them flying above. Last week, on my way to the temple I recorded the following video (hard to see them actually). Unortunately it's not one of the impressive scenes I saw as most of the times I haven't had a camera to capture it. But anyway....
The organisation FCS (Federation of Community Strength) introduced me last week to the principal of the principal of the secondary school in Gintota (see my previous post). So as an ambassador of FCS I will coach now a group of 7-10 teachers during the next 3 months with the objective of enabling them to teach their students basic IT know-how. This shall happen besides my activity around the Foundation of Goodness. Already 2 days after the initial meeting we had a kickoff discussion with the principal and the relevant teachers.
Kickoff session with principal and teachers
The first lesson shall be next week. To be honest I'm quite exited as I've never teached a bunch of teachers before in my life. Therefore I spent today the half day to prepare the contents of the first teaching session and to find the best strategy for the course. I guess a good mix of theory and exercise should be a good guide to a successful course. Will see.....
By the way, after the kickoff meeting the principal asked me whether I would like to teach also Yoga in his school. I agreed and he introduced me to his 13th grade class (hang on I'll add a video of this introduction in the next days, this was quite funny....). Meanwhile I conducted already the first yoga lesson (it was last Friday at 6:30am!). I think they liked it, even the principal was attending the class for about 30min until he got a call to an important meeting :-)
Yesterday was "English day" and it was celebrated just a few meters away from the main centre of the foundation in Seenigama. Some kids of the sponsored Lahiru pre school in Seenigama were about to join the school and it was their last day pre school. So also certificates were handed over to the kids during this event. And guess what... I had to personally handover some of these certificates :-).
A quite big audience - the hall was packed!
Certificate ceremony
General Manager Sampath Viraj Prasanjana of FoG and me in the first row
The Foundation of Goodness in Seenigama has also several other locations. There are two so called "heartbeat" projects in 2 villages in the nearby area offering course or community facilities and there is another centre in the remote northern area of Sri Lanka. All centres are ment to focus on developing a rural community development model.
One day I accompanied Saman Kumara, a skilled IT-instructor of the foundation whith whom I closely work together, when he was giving a computer lesson in the centre in Udumulla (one of the heart beat projects).
the Udumulla heartbeat project
Community centre in Udumulla
Computer learning room in Udumulla
Saman walking out the computer room - forgot something?
From here you can enjoy a very nice view onto the river (sorry, I cannot remember the name) which is just a few meters aside. Very, very nice! I thought about taking a bath because it was so hot that day. But then I changed my opinion. You never know what creature creeps under the surface....
