Summer Internship with Make a Difference – Satarupa Barma from Shri Ram College of Commerce
Daily Winner for: – 11th August 2011
Name of the intern: – Satarupa Barma
Institute: – Shri Ram College of Commerce
Organization interned with: – Make A Difference
When you tell people you’re doing Economics from SRCC, the reaction is almost always a “Woah, you are going to get this amazing job at a bank/consultancy which pays you a million bucks”. The choice of internships for students here reflects this future path. The internships are at big banks and MNCs with brilliant stipends.
But somehow I’ve wanted something different. I wanted a different internship from simply attending office in formal clothes, sitting around, and earning the stipend but doing no real work. I wanted something closer to my life aim – education for everyone, right down to the last level of society. And therefore I went MAD.
MAD or Make A Difference is a national organisation, in 29 cities of India, which provides English Communication skills and career guidance to the urban underprivileged starting from the primary level. It is a not-for-profit organisation, running solely by the goodwill of individuals and companies and on the fuel of pure dedication and enthusiasm that each of the teachers at MAD brings with himself/herself.
Every Sunday for two hours I go to Daryaganj in Delhi, to a place called the Arya Anathalaya, to teach my class – a bunch of twelve young & enthusiastic students – English. The class is supposed to be for two hours,but you don’t realise as time flies by and before you know it, the games, the activities, and the sheer energy of the kids tell you the time is long over.
And this is not a random attempt to get underprivileged kids to learn. Oh no, Sir. The books that we teach them from are from the Cambridge Curriculum – a curriculum carefully designed to ensure retention with successful teaching methodologies emphasised on. The internship didn’t begin overnight. There were rigorous orientation sessions, curriculum training sessions et al to familiarise us with the process. The students are randomly hustled into one class, and there are Baseline Tests to ensure that the work we’re doing is actually getting to them.
The MAD family is a bunch of extremely motivated & focused individuals who want to do their bit for society. My peers ask me what stipend I get at this internship. I tell them that the joy when a kid in your class ,who has never had access to the kind of opportunities that we do, stands up and recites 38 countries of the world in perfect pronunciation, or tells you he’s had a lovely time in class today, or designs a puzzle for you to try out; it’s more reward than the combined internships of all my classmates together.
I intend to continue this association with MAD as long as I can. Making A Difference not only to those kids’ lives but also to the quality of mine. My internship was absolutely and completely a YO! internship and I hope I’m able to get through to more people to be able to tell them what a wonderful place MAD is.
Was this interesting? If yes, please like the post on facebook (below) and help Satarupa become winner of the week and win the prize (Rs. 1,000/-) that she truly deserves!
