Bits and Bytes Bang

Bits and Bytes Bang was the grand finale of the Learn IT program for the year 2009 - 10. Children graduating from the Learn IT program displayed the presentations they had prepared through the course of the year. Anju Lavina, Dream Team Alumni shares her experience below. It had been a while since I had spoken to the volunteers and children from Learn IT. It is the programme that I first started with and so despite the stress it gave me, it is still very close to my heart. It had been over 3 months since I’d seen them or heard of their progress and so I was very eager to attend the “Bits and Bytes Bang” – the highly anticipated finale of the programme. Here, the children are given a platform to showcase the entire year of their learnings – which not only included the practical aspect of technical knowledge but also an opportunity for the children to discover the life skills they had picked up on the way.

Before we dreamt of being a big organisation, this “finale” happened at the end of their course which lasted a few weeks. There were the 12 children who were part of the job, 3 or 4 volunteers, a Dream A Dream representative and one from the children’s centre. The children would work in groups, choose a topic, and work on a word file and a PowerPoint presentation. Apart from this, the children were prepped by the volunteers on presentation skills and public speaking. . It was a pretty small but intense experience always.

This year, keeping with the spirit of scale, the volunteers and Pavithra thought of integrating all the presentations from the different centres into one big event. This, I thought, was a fool proof way of opening up the event for life skills development among the children. Apart from learning to work in a team, the children learn to reach team goals within a short, specific period of time. They also learn to sift through the enormous load of information first gathered and use only information that they think is important to share. The children learn to share tasks within the team and learn to support each other as they take the stage to make their presentations. The added bonus of this new idea of doing things was that the children get a feel for the programme outside of their centre. They get to meet and interact with other children in the programme from other centres. The unique feature, the volunteers hoped, was that since the children are from different communities and speak a different language, they will get to interact with each and in that way, build interpersonal skills. The programme had always been accused of being too technical and not enough Life Skills. This was one way to solve it. Since nothing like this had been done before, I was a bit anxious to see the way it unfolded. It was a pleasant surprise to see how the entire event from beginning to end flowed smoothly, without any hitch. It was also really heartening to watch Hema from RTS, Ashok from HBP and many others come out of their comfort zone to put on breathtaking presentations. What was even better was the fact that while Pavithra seamlessly handled the event, the programme team was out there in full force to support her.

Some of the children came to me after their presentations to talk to me about what I thought and about how they could improve. What moved me was that they took the initiative to ask for constructive criticism and use it to improve themselves and help their other batch-mates out. Many of them told me how this opportunity had never been given to them before and now that they had been given the push to pursue it, they felt confident and more patient. They talked to me about the challenges of working in a team and how they collectively learnt how to work it out without taking it personally. One child told me that he had been to another computer course but he never learnt as much as he did with the Learn IT programme. When I asked him why he thought so, he said that it was because of the one on one help he got from the volunteers, they simple way in which they were taught, the games that were more effective than memorizing like in all other subjects and Pavithra akka’s constant guidance. All of them said that they had already recommended the programme to their juniors and wanted more of the programme. One girl said that she had never been exceptional in studies but with the Learn IT programme she found she did better in studies and even plucked up the courage to be active in class and not feel shy about it. I wish I had more time to hear all the stories the children were eager to tell me. One thing I understood from my conversations with them, Dream A Dream was instrumental in giving the children the space they needed. The delicacy and sensitivity with which the children were treated was also a major contributor to what I could only see as the success of the programme. Kudos to Dream A Dream for reaching another milestone.