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Uddami Newsletter Spring 2003 |
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Happy Poila Baishek It's springtime in Kolkata and April 15th is Bengali New Year. This may be the only place in the world where three New Year's are celebrated - Bengali on April 15th, traditional Western on January 1st and Divali (Hindu New Year whose date varies but is usually sometime in October. So Happy New Year!New Assistant Director Nivedita Pal is now our Assistant Director of the School. She started as one of the first two local teachers in our Anwar Shah Road location two years ago and has been a wonderful asset to the school. With Nivedita's patience and guidance Uddami has been able to grow and become a school where students can truly realize their full potential.
Nivedita Pal, Assistant Director Our second grant Thank you to Hernan Zin and Acción por la Infancia, an organization based in Barcelona, Spain, for a most generous donation. Hernan Zin came last year to see the school and film several of our classes, including our deaf class. The students in this class were great sports about walking back and forth to the school, over and over again so Hernan could get just the right shot. Thank you Hernan! http://www.accionporlainfancia.org/ |
Our new chairs! New look for the Uddami classroom When we first arrived at Prince Anwar Shah Road the previous tenant was kind enough to leave us four desks and about a dozen chairs. After piling cushions on the chairs for the shorter students and enduring the horrible scraping sound of metal against linoleum, we decided to replace the tables and chairs. Three new tables were made-to-order for Uddami by a young carpenter named Prakash. We purchased 7 adjustable chairs on wheels, 4 bright yellow and blue plaid for the computer workstations and 3 red for the teachers to easily move from student to student. Everyone is thrilled with the new look and no one complains about having to type for an hour anymore. What happened to the old furniture? We donated it to New Light, another organization just starting their own computer center! What we have, what we need Every year we get more adept at predicting our expenses for the year. This year our operating budget is $15,500 which includes two new computers. If we had six computers the cost per student would drop to $300. If you would like to sponsor a student, you can donate the cost for tuition to operating expenses. We wouldn't say no if you wanted to buy us a computer... You can do this online, right now, through DonateNow or send a check to the Tides Center, all the information you need is here How You Can Help. |
Teacher Workshops in Durgapur Shadhika Foundation sponsored our talented staff to conduct two workshops for the teachers of HOPE, two schools in Durgapur for students with disabilities. In our first session we tried to reduce the fear of computers that most of the teachers had. We concentrated on increasing basic skills in the second one and we are about to do a third workshop in April. These workshops have been so successful that we are thinking of offering our seminars to teachers in other schools.Short notices Congratulations to Subhasish Sarkar (graduate 2002) on his marriageGood luck to Rabia Khatoon (our assistant teacher) on her class XII exams A truely excellent performance by Raja Mohan Das (one of our deaf students) as the monkey god Hannuman in his school play Ramayana Wishing all the best to Gopal Das (graduate 2001) who is waiting for his visa for Dubai to start a new graphic design job. Student Statistics as of April 1st -Deaf students - 2 Women students - 11 Total students - 29 Graduates - 25 
Nasima, Nivedita and Nizamul |
| I would like to thank you for your interest in Uddami, we all appreciate your support. Alison Saracena, Director Uddami :: 200 Brannan Street #114 :: San Francisco CA 94107 http://www.uddami.org Any suggestions, comments or questions... please send us a message
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